


Brigadier's Brewers

by Anonymississippi



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alcoholism, F/F, Not your mother's coffee shop au, POV First Person, PTSD, Snipers, there's also coffee, vigilantes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2018-09-19 07:08:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 170,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9424754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymississippi/pseuds/Anonymississippi
Summary: When Astra crash landed eight years ago with the rest of the Fort Rozz prisoners, she was in no condition to fight another war. Her planet was gone, her loved ones dead, and any hope for a future... nonexistent.It wasn't until she overheard a conversation in the heart of National City that she found hope again. Someone had mentioned a crest, the House of El, and an excursion undertaken to find a pumpkin latte. So, in a last-ditch effort to reconnect with any surviving family members, Astra opens Brigadier's Brewers, a coffee shop on the outskirts of the UCNC campus. With the help of her White Martian friend M'gann M'orzz, Astra finds hope, family, and a love brewing stronger than her strongest cup of coffee.ORThe General Danvers CoffeeShop!AU. Set approximately two years before season one.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SinginPrincess (TheOnlySPL)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheOnlySPL/gifts).



I once led armies to the mountainous peaks of over twenty-seven planets, in nearly as many solar systems. I held the respect of every leader in the Military Guild, rebuilt wasted villages and cities, organized relief efforts and personally escorted scholars, historians, and archaeologists into war zones for the sake of cultural preservation. I piloted interstellar space craft and won numerous marksmanship competitions with Kryptonian firearms and primitive weaponry. I foresaw my planet’s own demise and was arrested, ridiculed, and condemned for my predictions, and hadn’t the depth of cruelty to revel in my vindication; for I have also been, above much else, terribly alone.

I have held a gasping, dying child in my arms. We were lost in the red desert sands of Streld when the bullet came. I held her and sang soft, insignificant lullabies in a language she’d never know, then heard the gurgle of death strangle her little life away. A single trickle of blood ran down the creased laugh line of her cracked, desiccated lips, and she was gone.

I have lost my soulmate to the pride of my people, and I have given up much of what I once believed for the sake of making my way on this primitive, undeveloped planet.

I have held the title of General, Arclominian of the First Order, Brigadier Commander and Lord Markswoman, then First Captain and Ensign (before I garnered the accolades). Before other titles, like _traitor_ , and _rebel_ , and _lunatic_ were foisted upon me from on high.

There was another side of me that was once loved. Loved with names like _sister_ and _aunt_ and _friend_ , no longer _remainder_ nor _anomaly_.

I have been called so many things, held so many titles, but this label is one I never anticipated, not with the life’s trajectory I had somewhat plotted out upon my acceptance to the Military Guild:

 

_Small Business Owner._

 

At least, that is what I pen on my taxation documents, when I compile my calculations each January, months ahead of the humans’ arbitrarily set April deadline. I am a _small business owner_ , but I do not have any _dependents_ , nor do I claim many _deductions_. The humans of the west utilize the Gregorian calendar, but from what little research I have done, the calendar is predicated upon western tradition that follows a solar cycle—not that the humans would know much about their Time’s historical origins. So why April is regarded as taxation month is, like so many other human inclinations, established by the whims of those in power. Any queries toward the origins of the Earth’s time-keeping inevitably lead to a misinformed deduction about Leap Year’s existence, and then segue to simpler topics.

On Krypton, we had three moons and a lunar calendar, six seasons to the cycle, and as many cycles as our people could sustain before we fueled our own destruction.

Perhaps I am going—what is the human idiom?— _off track_.

I should start at the beginning. Or, if not the beginning, then at least at my arrival on your planet.

This might take some time.

Please, do get comfortable. Settle in.

Perhaps you will prepare yourself a mug of coffee?

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

I crash landed in an alien prison eight years ago in the Mojave Desert.

There are several important components to such a declaration. We shall face each component in chronological turn, for I have found humans respond best to linear narratives, as time travel has not yet been achieved on this planet—theorized, yes, but not actualized.

So… I _crash_ landed.

Within that word is ash and char and nothing at all comfortable. 

_A crash._

But consider, I have breached the atmosphere of multiple planets before. Kryptonian technologies had been so advanced that I never had to fear anything as precarious or jarring as a _crash landing_. Your human jumbo jets experience _turbulence_ and destabilization upon descent. That is how I know you are centuries behind us and others; behind, but staggering interminably toward some technological goal. I have never been near a Kryptonian ship that crash landed, whether it was used for domestic, international, or intergalactic transport.

Needless to say, crash landing into Earth’s atmosphere was… painful.

I awoke after what my subordinates measure as two human months, with a sore body and an addled brain. But shortly, mere weeks after stepping into your bright, healthy sun’s light for the first time, I felt energized beyond explanation. It was as if clouds had replaced the liquid in my bloodstream; I was filled with some sort of floating, gaseous vapor that could not bear me down as heavily as the thick, iron-based red of liquefied blood. I was buoyant.

I could _fly_.

I had strength immeasurable. Hearing unmatched by your most sensitive human devices. Scientists might detect reverberations to measure an earthquake or seismic movement on the Richter scale, but I can _hear_ the disturbances along the shifting tectonic shelves, can feel them ripple down to your planet’s smoldering core. I can stream heat matched only by volcanic magma and synthetic beams from my irises. All of this I found upon waking from a _crash landing_ , after a harrowing stint in a timeless prison.

I was (wrongfully) held in an alien prison, one of which I broke out of via _crash landing_ eight years ago. I will not bore you with the details of my sentencing and imprisonment. Suffice to say it was very much like a crash: unpleasant.

The eight years since, however, have been interesting.

I told you that upon my waking I was surrounded by subordinates. Those I had subdued during my time in a place called the Phantom Zone, a setting in which Time itself does not exist. I might have aged thirty years, but my body bore not one sign of the decades spent in an existential vacuum. My troops looked round me with hollow, sullen eyes that seem welded to the sockets of their skulls. Their skin looked pasty and pale, or pasty and lavender, pasty and pink, where once they gleamed in colors bold—royal purple, blinding magenta. It was as if they hadn’t emerged onto this planet’s surface until I woke to announce the deboardment from the ship— _prison_ —on which we all resided. They stayed in the darkness like creatures in hibernation, lying in wait until some safe signal was given.

I had become the herald of their safety.

Ironic, I suppose, considering my affinity for danger.

I had scraped and clawed my way to the top of their ranks to survive in that hell of a prison and for what? To lead them on some fruitless quest on a new world? A world so handicapped by its own pride and so backward in its thinking that it will surely follow in Krypton’s footsteps. The leaders here deny that climate patterns and changes will cripple the planet, or deem any study to undo or pause the effects _too expensive_ (as their coffers overflow from other frivolous enterprises).

I awoke broken beyond repair, and saw no point in starting a war I might not win, battling an ignorant and angry people.

I had grown weary of fighting for lost causes.

I abandoned those soldiers who stood by my bedside after a month in recovery, and set out to learn all I could about my new… _home_.

I hesitate to call it that even now; now, after I have found family and space and affection of my own. It is more my own instability that will not allow my lips to speak such a word, despite what good fortune has been heaped upon me by Rao above.

There are mornings when I look over the sharp edge of my tablet and stare at her, knuckles kinked and fingers curled round the handle of her coffee mug, brows pinched together in concentrated study of her files.

She is so beautiful that I lapse into doubt.

Is this another dream from which I will surely wake? As a soldier from a fallible world, I’d resigned myself to the belief that such happiness was never meant for me. I cannot be at ease on Earth in our shared kitchen.

No, I am surely huddled on my cot beneath the arching forcefield, my half circle of safety in a sea of bomb-laden purple sand. I am surely asleep, comatose, feeling precious seconds tick by in a space without time, imagining all the lives taken from me, as well as a life that was never meant to be mine.

She will feel my eyes on her and chastise me for staring, dump her lukewarm leftovers in the sink and press her lips to my forehead as she exits, and I will stew with worry in the same way Alura once worried for me.

I had no frame of reference for this anxiety, for harboring such love for another when he or she ran headfirst into danger.

I do now.

But that ending is a long way from where I started with you, so I hope I have not given away the good parts. Humans like their order.

Linear. Chronological.

I will return to the story.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

It did not take long (after several instances of running out on meals in small-town desert diners) that I grew to learn and understand the humans’ dependency on currency. I watched their televisions and found that they had many channels, fictional stories, reels and B-roll that reported current events, all interspersed with advertisements that ranged from the practical to the bizarre. I likewise discovered that much business, social, financial, political, etc., was conducted via the _Internet_.

I stole a _tablet_.

I created several _accounts_.

I falsified what documents needed falsifying with the help of technologies taken from Fort Rozz and with my advanced knowledge of sciences not yet studied by humans.

It was so dreadfully easy.

I extrapolated on market patterns after studying Keynesian financial histories, Bulls and Bear markets, housing bubbles, and quickly, with very little initial capital, was able to provide for myself without stealing by exploiting financial investments purely through _online_ interactions. All of it done, I assure you, by adhering to every legal prescription set forth. I also read the legal and tax codes of the United States, Canada, Mexico, the European Union, China, Egypt, Australia, Japan, and a smattering of other countries who had collectively piled their monies into similar systems.

It took a week for me to learn them all, for me to realize how many loopholes existed.

Humans believe their markets are arbitrary.

I believe humans have no concept of foresight. Or perhaps, those that do, have the privilege, the time, and the education to study such patterns; to know such wealth can be accumulated through tax havens and the like. It seems unfair, but I never much concerned myself with petty human trials.

(That quickly changed).

Regardless of my prejudices, I amassed enough money in six months to get by in the desert of the southwestern United States of America. During one of my myriad study sessions in an establishment with free _wi-fi_ , I stumbled upon an article about Superman.

Superman, who wore the royal blue of the house of El.

My sister’s house, after she’d taken Zor-El’s name.

Mine by association.

A relative.

A connection.

I sought him out, but it took time.

My fruitless interaction with Kal-El, the son of Lara and Jor-El, left me wanting and frustrated in ways I had not been prior to meeting him. It gave me damnable hope, and just as quickly, snuffed it out like a flame with too-little kindling.

He was seen as a hero, a conqueror for the humans. I could tell from the way he carried himself that he was accustomed to reverence, to praise, but I could also tell, merely by watching the movements on live feeds of his skirmishes, that he was untrained. He relied heavily on powers granted him from the radiating yellow sun, and he had very little knowledge of combat techniques.

I could have fought him.

Likely, would have defeated him.

But I did not desire his defeat, only his aid.

“My mother knew of Krypton’s destruction,” Kal-El said one day, perched in a corner booth of a very loud, very busy eatery in a city called Metropolis.

He wore a white button-up shirt with black-framed glasses perched upon the bridge of his nose. A disguise. At that point, I had studied enough of human culture to blend in with their fashions, but my grasp of their language and interactions was still somewhat tenuous. I allowed Kal-El to do the interacting with the waitress attending our table, nodding at appropriate intervals, but I was more concerned with his information about Krypton. From what I gathered, he had been an infant when the planet exploded, and I had been sealed away for a long, silent time.

“She sent me away in a pod years ago,” he explained carefully. I could tell he was wary of my questions. “I was raised by humans.”

“You have no… no recollection of Krypton?”

Kal-El didn’t bother to hide his suspicions. Maybe he couldn’t. For someone with such little combat training, perhaps he had no need for covert operations. His reticence was palpable when he looked at me, bedraggled, clad in an outfit that passed for substandard humanity when I had met him in the sky two days previously, addressing and calling out to him in Kryptonese (of which he knew very little). For someone who was not raised on Krypton, he had a startling grasp of its history, and could even speak to some of its sciences with an air of understanding. His speech was imperfect, with a weight to the accent that linked to his upbringing on Earth; but the sounds were still there, and the words warmed my heart like homecoming after deployment.

It hurt to hear it from him, someone who knew nothing of their significance.

“I am Kryptonian,” Kal-El said, his brows knitting together in circumspect study of my person. That single afternoon spent interacting with him left so many questions unanswered, so many paths abandoned. He knew more than he let on, and it took a long time before I forgave him.

(Again, I am _getting ahead of myself_ , but I digress.)

“But I have very little knowledge of my home planet. It was there, and it’s not anymore, and there are few, if any of us, left,” he said plainly. Not without sensitivity… just… with a stoic resolution he had always known. I was still growing accustomed to speaking of my home in the past tense.

“Clark!”

A woman, with sunshine skin and straight black hair, a large bag and high, pinchy-looking shoes, called after Kal-El.

“I’m sorry, General Astra In-Ze,” he told me, on that day seven years ago. “But I know nothing of Krypton or its survivors, if there are any. Do you have a means of contact if I do discover anything, so that I may alert you?”

We exchanged contact information. I supplied him with my _email address_ , a place where I had registered my online banking for my stocks to deposit their surpluses. I have had as many email addresses as I have had aliases during my years on this planet, but I found myself periodically checking the one I gave Kal-El, Superman, Clark Kent.

He never responded to me.

And yet he knew all along that we were not the only survivors.

It must be testament to my fatigue and disillusionment at the time that I did not initially realize he called me _General_ , when I had never introduced myself as such. I had taken to forgetting that title ever existed, and all of the failures I harbored because of it.

He kept information from me, after a trip to his secluded fortress, after hearing of my history, my sentencing, a false reputation that had been spread across the galaxies. He never contacted me because he feared I would do harm to my sister’s daughter.

He feared I would take revenge on my darling Kara.

Seven years I lost, until her sister walked through my door, and everything changed.

 

 

* * *

 

The morning rush at the shop reminds me of battle. But before the rush, I must do the preparation. The warm-up.

I would wake at 5 a.m. without fail and fly. I would watch the myths fade, those connect-the-dot star patterns I have seen in the sky, dissolve and retreat as the dawn’s blinding power tromped over the horizon. I flew for speed and distance and I exerted myself with every ounce of my afforded strength. Zig-zagging through cityscapes, hurtling over mountain ranges, dipping down to brush the tree tops of sequoia forests—I flew fast every morning, honing my new-found powers as I would hone my accuracy with a new weapon.

Humans have a saying. They have several, but this is one I find most appealing: _old habits die hard_. It means that what was once instilled within you cannot be easily extracted.

Or something of that nature.

I have trained in the early morning for longer than I can recall, decades, scores of years, ages and lightyears ago. I always woke to exertion.

I saw no reason to change, waking on this planet.

So I would wake, and fly, and prepare to open the shop by six a.m. The morning rush did not start until seven, and by then, one of my fellow workers would’ve been there to help me.

Even with someone working at my side, it still reminded me of battle.

Once I returned from flight, I would shower quickly and don my black pants, my black shirt with the white screen print, my maroon apron and a pair of unnecessary glasses, a grey, threadbare hat that I had seen in magazines that seemed to change the proportions of my face—it made me look younger than the seven human decades I have lived. I would walk downstairs and prepare my weapons: air-pump coffee dispensers, paper filters, blenders with seven settings and a Bluetooth speaker, individual pour-over ceramic mugs and electric grinders, manual French presses, larger glass Chemex coffeemakers, plus the standard, industrial brewer with 4 hot plates, two on bottom and two on top; then, a flick of the switch so that the espresso machine would warm up, its steady hum vibrating in my chest like the aftershocks of a plasma blaster charging for use.

I would step out in the back alley and retrieve the bouquet of flowers Mr. Germain brought fresh everyday; then, I would speed through the shop and place the dewy stalks of lavender or hyssop in the clear, ill-assorted vases, reminding myself to slow down so that I would not snap the petals from the budding heads.

The condensed version: I became the proprietor of a shop that sold coffee, a fuel humans need above any other, after six years on this planet.

The expanded version… well, it is expansive.

 

* * *

 

 

I could not bear to watch M’gann continue along her treacherous, self-destructive path. She was my friend, and I cared for her deeply, but I could not return to a life that would pit me against others for sport, no matter how lucrative. I have my war wounds and M’gann hers—perhaps that is what compelled her to help me from the outset. No matter what I felt for my roommate, my friend, my _savior_ , in many regards, I could not play the human’s game of chance— _Roulette_ —as M’gann did.

“You’re moving out?” she asked me, one evening when the clouds hung low like a bruise over the moon. We lived in the warehouse district over National City, above a bar unknown to many. When I first came to National City four years previous, M’gann dragged me into the spare room and nursed me back to health until my powers returned; my bones knitted themselves together again and my scratches faded to translucency. It was as if I had never been hurt.

As if I had never hurt myself.

My lowest point was a year after my conversation with Kal-El. He never sought me out, and I checked my email every day.

Nothing.

M’gann was passing through the desert in a dilapidated Jeep Wrangler when she saw my body in the distance, heard my wailing brain and broken heart, she said, with her White Martian capabilities. She gave me the room with the window, but I could rarely see the stars. Too much light over National City, too much dense fog this close to the harbor, the kind of clouds that hang so low and thick you imagine you can reach out and break off a piece of wet, fluffy white, but I never could master the clouds. I could fly through them, but I could never _hold_ them. Such a realization made me feel just a bit more normal, for I could do many impossible things.

Then again, there were many impossible things I couldn’t do. Save my family. Save a planet. Stitch together something irreparable.

Or so I believed.

M’gann and I had been drinking since sundown, having taken our rightfully amassed time off from behind the bar. We made a decent team, she and I; considering we had both traveled far and wide in our histories, we knew a good deal about the random assortments of off-world spirits collected in the place. I had indulged in drink during my earliest years as ensign, when the deaths and casualties of comrades hit me hardest, their crisp, undiluted pain digging into my heart’s flesh without discrimination. Elder. Infant. Soldier. Mother. Son. Specialist. Assassin.

They all died, and I wept for each. I drank toasts to their legacies, and would try my hardest not to forget them with each new mission.

M’gann looked over at me and smiled, then drew the curtain back. A crash from below jarred our peace, and I could tell she was dreading the clean-up that would be left for her the following morning.

Over the past four years, I had settled into the role of barmaid. I found it—well, I had no dignity left to speak of, so I could not allow my pride to handicap me any further than it already had. I believed myself better than slinging drinks and tossing alien drunkards out of the place, but M’gann had helped me, and so I would help her.

So I settled. I had nothing to work for.

Until the pumpkin latte.

“I’ve found an establishment,” I told her, sipping carefully on twice-distilled Bromakaron mead. “…in need of a proprietor. I want to sell coffee.”

“You want to sell coffee?”

“Yes.”

“To humans? You hate humans,” M’gann told me.

“I hate _most_ humans,” I qualified, for there had been two or three that had struck me as exceptional in my time on earth. Kal-El’s mate had been one. With one look she laid low _Superman_ , calling him to heel at her side like a trainer with a lapdog. There was an aged Navajo couple I met in a diner in New Mexico who imparted some bits of universal wisdom that I found comforting before I made attempts at ending everything… and I’m sure there has been at least _one_ other human that has held my interest since arriving.

“Why coffee?”

“Humans like it well enough. It is a lucrative enterprise.”

M’gann had taken another sip of whatever her drink of choice had been that night. She was a White Martian gone AWOL, a deserter, a rebel, as I had once been called myself. She defied direct orders. She went against her people. She held fast to her convictions, and paid a dear price for it.

How could I not be drawn to her?

Her secret was hers and mine for the keeping. For all below, M’gann was a _green_ Martian with the viridian skin and the sleek, regal cape, not one of the monstrous Whites who had laid waste to an entire population. She took humanoid form for shifts behind the bar, and was beautiful. She had perfectly round, muddy eyes that glistened with perpetual sadness. She hunched her shoulders uncertainly, fearfully, whenever I raised my voice to her. I did not mean to do so as often as I did, but we worked in a bar—an _alien_ bar—and our patrons would oftentimes reach decibel levels that would deafen human hearing.

Her trigger was sound. Screeches, harsh words, shouts, screams.

She had to excuse herself to the stockroom more than once when nights behind the bar grew busy beyond expectation. I would follow, and hold her collapsing form in my arms. Even when she changed, I would cradle her White Martian head in my lap while she mourned her past deeds, her skin dry and porous against my fingertips. She wanted to be seen as a Green Martian, and so I tried to honor that request. To treat her as such.

I understood how desperately she wanted to be seen as an innocent.

“What’s your real reason?” M’gann asked me, flicking the lamp on by her side. She set her drink on the coaster near the end table and pulled her legs up beneath her. “For the coffee shop, I mean.”

Such queries were a hazard in our friendship. We both considered it our burden of care to probe and question when the other planned something risky; my reservations with the human—Veronica Sinclair—had everything to do with M’gann’s safety. In a way, M’gann’s queries into my business venture with the coffee shop had everything to do with my own. She knows there is not much in this world that can hurt me; but she also knows that I will not hesitate to hurt myself.

To be known intimately was new to me, then.

I am still getting used to it.

“I thought I saw her,” I answered. I then proceeded to chug my mead, to clog my head with drink so that I would not fall prey to what-ifs and hope. “Or heard her. I heard the words _Kal-El_ and _keychain,_ _crest_ and _disgrace_ fall from a female voice and I just…”

“You want it to be her,” M’gann supplied. “But I still don’t understand the coffee part.”

“I was near the university… downtown,” I answered. “Those children flock to coffee houses. Caffeine is the human scholar’s drug of choice.”

“I don’t think you’ve ever been to a college bar,” M’gann teased me.

I smiled at her over the lip of my glass. She had been my savior in so many ways. And here I stood, prepared to part ways, in hopes of finding someone I once thought lost forever.

Truthfully, I felt like I needed a break from M'gann's presence as well. I was afraid of being roped into doing even more destruction than I had already wrought.

“I cannot ask you once again to abandon this treacherous scheme with Miss Sinclair?”

M’gann stared into her rippling liquid.

“It’s twice a year at most,” she shrugged. “I don’t believe it will grow into anything substantial. She would pay you—”

“I have no need of payment,” I answered hotly, and tried not to allow the heat behind my eyes to spill over my cheeks. “Nor do you, if you would accept my help.”

“You know how important it is to feel self-sufficient here,” M’gann answered me. “I hope this isn’t some elaborate means of paying me back. Just because I found you in the desert—”

“You nursed me back to health from my suicidal thoughts,” I corrected her.

I feared then, when I left to start the coffee house, that M’gann was putting her life in serious danger with the human exploiter; willingly so, and I tried to drag her away from it with every ounce of my strength. She would not go, and it was a fight she needed to win—or lose—for herself. I could not impose my philosophy upon her, but I could express my concern.

To be a friend is to become vulnerable. Both M’gann and I have a difficult time of that.

“You know I am… that I owe you more than my life. You will be welcome at any time, M’gann.”

“You say it like you won’t be back here on the weekends to catch the Perlidian karaoke night,” M’gann answered me, her bright brown eyes clouding with sorrow.

“I would never miss the Perlidians making utter fools of themselves,” I answered.

The following morning, I moved out of the apartment we shared above the secret alien bar.

Four weeks later, I opened my coffee house.

Six weeks later, I met Alexandra.

 

 

* * *

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

I had been looking for some sign of my homeworld since I crash landed here all that time ago. My downward spiral of misery left me for dead in the Arizona desert where I had resolved to return to Fort Rozz, to see if there was anything left of the world I once knew. Before I arrived, I looped round the world just to see if I could, pushing my energies to the brink and nearly draining my powers.

Then, finally facing the fact that Rozz would have nothing for me but memories of torture and loss, I hurled myself into a mountain range and dislocated both my femurs from the sockets in my hips--my powers had blown. M’gann Morzz found me injured and half-dead after I’d expended what was left of my being in a crying jag of rage. She brought me to her apartment in National City, a place in the Western United States where she found employment working as a barmaid at a secret establishment known only to alien refugees.

There were species of multiple origins who frequented the bar. Many of whom whose planets I had visited. Many of whom I had never heard of before.

I thought I knew so much more than the humans.

I thought I knew… all there was to know.

I was wrong, and I am strong enough to admit that now.

I would wander the city sometimes and think of my sister. Think of how she fought for my freedom, fought for my cause, and, despite my best efforts at forewarning the populace, she died like the rest of them.

My soulmate.

_Alura._

We were supposed to be the same person. I knew her as I know my own desires, my own dreams, what I thought I knew of my own destiny. And yet, I could never have predicted this. This quotidian, average existence on a less-than-average planet. I could never have predicted what a wild gamble on an eavesdropped conversation might bring me.

I opened a coffee shop because I thought I heard her.

Alura.

_I can’t believe the House of El’s noble crest has been printed on a keychain_ , the voice had said.

I was downtown, haggling prices with craft beer suppliers. For all the aliens that frequented the bar, we likewise served some human patrons who fancied themselves alien allies. We needed a stock that wouldn’t boil their innards, so my trips to the heart of National City were frequent and tedious.

But I will never forget that conversation.

_Listen, you need to tone down the criticism, oh-mighty-house-of-Zor-El_ , a second feminine voice said. A bit more cutting, and with less reverence when she spoke the name of a long-dead house. _Chill out, will you? You’re just grumpy because you haven’t had your pumpkin latte._

_It’s not fall, they’re not even on sale,_ the first voice lamented. _But I don’t need a pumpkin—_

_He doesn’t have the same frame of history as you do._

_It’s a disgrace_. The voice I believed to be Alura’s argued passionately with the second. _Superman does good, don’t get me wrong, but it’s irreverent to have my crest splayed on toothpaste tubes and Wheaties boxes and sporting equipment. That’s my home, my family, my_ blood!

The sounds of the city overwhelmed me shortly thereafter, and the young Latino man with the twelve pack of crafted Pilsner was snapping his fingers before my blank expression.

_God, I wish there was a decent coffee place around here_.

I was nodding inattentively at the vendor, doing my best to latch onto the final bits of conversation between the two.

_You like, live off of that stuff._

_You’re only in your second year of undergrad,_ the second voice said to the first. _When you get to be my age, at my level, you’re gonna want it infused via IV into your body._

_I’ll stick to my pumpkin lattes and hope my major never gets_ that _intense, no matter how many essays I have to write_.

_Good luck with that one, Kara_.

Kara.

_Kara._

Kara, not Alura.

“We will pay you whatever you want,” I muttered at the sales rep. Even if I had to pay out of pocket for the beer, I knew I had to leave M’gann and all her gracious hospitality soon. That very evening if I could. Because Kara was alive.

Kara was alive, and she desired a _pumpkin latte_.

 

 

* * *

 

 

I found a foreclosed property for sale on the ground floor, at 160k, with a half apartment above it. I paid for it in cash, and the woman behind the counter at the court house reprimanded me harshly for carrying so much loose money in a bag. Based on comps in the area of the University of Central National City, I had come prepared to pay 250k, but foreclosure worked in my favor. I still had ninety-thousand dollars stuffed in my duffel, which might have spelled trouble for a normal human.

Of course, I was… well, _me._

The front window of the property was not a window. It was a _wall_ of windows. Or, more of a retractable door. All paned glass, 4x3 units, each dusty panel roughly a yard long, two feet in height, and they were all stacked neatly atop each other. I appreciated the symmetry. If I drew the chain on the pulley, the panels would kink and the door would raise and wind would blow through the deep, darkened establishment. There was a similar retractable door that opened into the alley at back, a _drive-through._ The insides were covered in a thick layer of grime, and there was refuse stacked throughout, half a lumpy mattress used by some vagrant from worse times passed placed innocuously against the far wall.

It took myself and M’gann a single day to clear the property for renovation. We cleaned it all, tossed what was unnecessary into the dumpster out back and refurbished what we could. It was on “the bad side of town,” though _bad_ seemed arbitrary, in that minorities and youth tended to roam the streets unchaperoned.

Good.

College students.

My target demographic.

Kara had been talking to a _graduate student_.

Kara was an _undergraduate_.

These are words I learned after studying the human educational system. My understanding is leaps and bounds ahead of what the humans deem educated or enlightened, though _diplomas_ and _degrees_ seem strangely important to their cultures. I have resolved, upon opening this shop, that I would obtain one of those.

I hired a contractor to make up the plans.

Then, I fired him after our first meeting. His time line for the project wasn't quick enough. I took the plans, and renovated myself.

It took me one month.

Back to the property. The property that had once been a repair place for human _automobiles_ , so electric lines were already run to multiple outlets. Thankfully, there was one washroom in the back, and it took very little effort for me to install water pipes in the skeleton of the building. There was a metal stair set that went underground, and a grate over which I assume cars once drove in order for mechanics to repair them. M’gann told me to keep the troublesome grate, because it added _character_ to the place.

I acquiesced, for she seemed to know more of human decor and aesthetic inclinations than I.

Relief efforts on planets primitive and advanced have caused me to become quite _handy_ , as the humans say. I may have emerged covered in dirt and rodent feces and the wet from a leaky pipe, but the property slowly began to take shape.

There were cobwebs in corners and cobwebs hung from ceiling to wall and wall to floor and cobwebs drooping off of counters. Gauzy, bone-white blankets of web and a layer of dust thicker than what might have collected if my imprisonment had also involved suspended animation—but it didn’t. I felt every second of those thirty years where time didn’t pass, and I thought I might go crazy shuffling about in the cell. But there had never been dust, no matter that the souls in the prison were little more than artifacts from dead populations.

Rubble from collapsed ceiling tiles and holes from crumbling bits of dry wall littered the floor, but I read the California Health and Safety Code for Food Industries. I knew the standard of cleanliness that the state set, and so resolved to abide by it and be authorized for operation as swiftly as I could.

I swept and scrubbed and excavated the ruins of a mechanical establishment from bygone days, intent on drawing collegians with their stress and textbooks so that I might see her again. I installed countertops, wiring, the knobs on the basin sinks that I would use to clean my instruments. I used a thick paste, a mud and spackle, a scraper, a bit of sand paper. I found paints and wallpapers, and deferred to M'gann's decorative knowledge once again.

Art work. Seating and lighting, curlicued and noveua, hanging, wrought-iron fixtures with low-level wattages to suggest coziness and warmth. I strung happy bulbs—fairy lights—along the exterior window. I only turned them on at night because during the day, I raised the garage door that had once swallowed cars. Light streamed in along with open air, which helped brighten the place with California sunshine. I placed a large chalkboard on the sidewalk, and tried to channel my sister’s talents, creating rough, multicolored sketches with the chalky sticks that stained my fingertips.

I attempted to draw a _pumpkin_.

A chance in a million.

I scavenged yard and estate sales in the haunted area M’gann once referred to as _suburbia_ , where every house looks the same and culs-de-sac seem like endless loops of engineering gone awry. She and I found mismatched chairs with even more mismatched upholsteries; I found ceramic mugs and hand-molded mugs and mugs with faces painted on them from sons to fathers, _World’s Best Dad_ roughly splattered on the exterior.

They cannot all be the World’s Best Dad, I found myself thinking… and then pondered as to why the households would be selling such mementos in the first place. Is the dad no longer close? Has the son died? Was it a daughter? Is there simply too much clutter in the house? Humans cling so desperately to _things_ , to bric-a-brac and tchocthkes and useless appliances that elevate their status while compromising their sincerity.

When one puts so much stock in the collection of _things_ , what does that say about one’s regard for _people_?

Soon enough, I had collected the furnishings, appliances, and accouterments necessary to open a coffee house. M’gann helped with installation on nights that she did not work the bar, and we would drink Dramallion wines so potent we would occasionally find ourselves passed out on the faded couches, stuffing puffed out from rips that we would shortly sew together.

I hated to leave M’gann to her fate with Roulette, but I could not give up my chance to meet Kara once again.

When M’gann was summoned for her brutal annual performance by Veronica Sinclair, I studied all I could about the coffee industry intensely for three days. Coffee, of the genus _Coffea_ , from the family _Rubiaceae_ , of which there are two primary species: _Arabica_ , _Robusta_ , etc. I discovered that I was somewhat at a disadvantage, for _pumpkin lattes_ were limited to autumnal seasonal servings, and, to compound the misfortune, California climates did not subscribe to seasonal weather patterns like the rest of the nation did. I studied so intensely I do not believe I slept during the opening process, but soon enough, I became an expert in _coffee_.

Prices in recent years have increased, as has the sense of turning a coffee purchase into an _experience_. I had acquired a mechanical, gilded espresso machine from Italy, one with a pumping lever so that I might run the shots _ristretto_ or _lungo_ , after I had measured the grounds down to the milligram with my digital balance. I offer Frenchpress brews, individualized cups of darkest, deepest roast to milder tastings with higher caffeine concentrations; I have investigated different companies and roasters, smelled coffee beans until I could pinpoint the country—or countries, if it was a cheaper blend—from which they were harvested. I became so immersed in learning that I nearly forgot to hire a staff to man the shop.

You will meet them all shortly.

I published marketing materials. I joined the _Facebook_ and the _Twitter_. I have many followers on the _Twitter_ , but cannot fathom why. Humans think me clever, because I tweet things like, _I like you a latte!_ , and _Rise and grind!_. These phrases translate to more foot traffic in my shop, so I am thankful for the humans’ low standards of humor.

 

* * *

 

 

Two weeks into the opening of the shop, I saw her.

She looked apprehensive, sharp around the edges and pale, save for the high flush in her cheeks. I remember fleetingly wondering if she had a fever, and then shoving that concern to the back of my mind, because myself, Han and Connie were servicing a line that nearly reached the door to the establishment.

Han and I were on the machines while Connie worked register. Her name was actually Consuelo; she was four-foot eleven of practiced Puerto Rican charm, with long, straight black hair that reached down to her waist. She always had to tie it back when working, but when she left it down, curled in loose ringlets for staff parties, she aged seven years instantly. Connie was the most charming of us all, and knew how to engage with the customers. She could tabulate basic percentages, additions, and change with lightening speed thanks to her double international business and accounting major at UCNC.

Han and I worked the machine and called names.

We were both actually quite bad at it at first—the name-calling, not the machines, since English was neither of our first languages.

We both enjoyed the clamor of the blender, ice knocking against steel blades and plastic walls with chilled, concentrated coffee extract and syrups of various flavors. Who needed the long, twisted serving spoons when I could knock the base of the blender and jostle the contents of the icy drink into a recyclable cup? I became a master of whipped cream; designs and sprinkles and colored straws seemed to set the college students’ spirits aflame, as if they hadn’t had such superficial pleasures granted them in years.

It seemed a nicety that I quickly learned they interpreted as a privilege.

Han danced in the vapor of the steam wands; while the espresso shot was strained through the machine Han placed his calloused hand against the outside of the steam pot and twisted the knob that controlled the wand temperature until the milk burbled into miniscule bubbles of frothy white microfoam. This was yet another handicap I would have to overcome. One was supposed to remove the milk in the steam pot from the wand once the pot became too hot to hold.

I am Kryptonian.

Nothing is _too hot_ for me.

I learned, though, after several misadventures with caramelized and scorched milk residue, when to pull back on the machine so I did not serve my customers any first degree burns along with their mocha lattes.

Han was a master; he would take one of the mismatched cups I had acquired and pour the milk with expert dexterity into the creamy collection of espresso film; after one review of a video on the _YouTube_ , he could create a heart-shape within the foam. After that, it was a flower. Then, with the addition of some spoons and swirling hand movements, he was able to produce fanciful scenery that left the customers flummoxed, itching to extract their smart phones from the depths of their pockets to photograph, filter, and post to their Instagram accounts.

I also have an Instagram account.

You can follow me at @Brigadier’s_Brewers. Please use the Amaro filter. Our products look best in a soft light.

Leah taught me about the filters, and the hashtags. Leah...she was a quiet girl, a mathematics major with wavy red hair who had another job tutoring various humans who hurled various balls into various spaces. Apparently, there was quite the celebrity afforded the ball-throwers of the university, when Leah was the one teaching them in the first place. Then there was Jeremiah, loud, exuberant, and supposedly stylish for a human. He had excellent people skills and held a position of power in the student government on campus. During his interview, he told me I looked too young to be a MILF, if he was so inclined in that direction—frankly, most of what he said during the interview I had to Google, but he had done a stint abroad the previous semester and already knew the difference between a breve and a cappuccino and an Americano and a flat white without my having to give him the test I had prepared.

Yes, there was a test.

My family likes to tease me about that now, but it helped me recruit the most efficient candidates. Anyway, back to the story:

 

* * *

 

 

That morning when she first walked in, hungover and grumpy like a vast majority of my patrons, I didn’t notice her. It would be another few weeks until I spoke to her properly, and she would be where I had been four and a half years previously; lost and hurting, on the brink of personal destruction, until some Martian found her and guided her to a greater purpose.

We are so alike, she and I.

I only wish I had paid her more heed when she first came through. Then again, perhaps it has all worked out exactly as it should. She was not my savior and I was not hers. In a way, we saved ourselves, and came together despite our trials.

That first morning, she bought a black coffee, which was self-serve, over on the opposite counter from where Connie would ring up the customers. She pumped one… two… three… four streams from the self-service airpots—and then she was off. I noticed that she brought her own to-go coffee carrier. I appreciated her attention to the environment, because I know that not all my customers recycle.

She did not come in much in the mornings. When she did, she was hungover.

I only ever talked to her at night. She was just starting to spiral, then.

 

* * *

 

 

It took her five minutes to realize I had brought her water, and not coffee.

I don’t think she ever realized that I brought her decaf whenever she lingered past ten o’clock.

Her name was Alexandra Danvers, and she was one of approximately forty-two thousand, eight hundred and twenty-three University of Central National City students that could, at any moment, frequent my shop. Her favorite spot was one of the cushy loveseats I had shoved up against the back eastern corner of the shop, because there was a lamp that arched over both open spots and an extra power strip that allowed for laptops and phone chargers and all assortment of other electrical plugs.

(I once had a student come in and charge his segue in one of my outlets. He was not welcome back, after I saw the month’s electric bill.

He could _walk_ , for Rao’s sake.)

Alexandra, with her wild mane of long russet hair, pinned back messily overtop the crown of her head, was my last customer of the evening, and seemed to have no intention of packing up her things. I had no idea what she would become to me then, curled in on herself, small, unwilling to take up more space than she thought she deserved (which was not much). When the place was busy, I would see her stacking her books in a pile from largest on the bottom to smallest on the top, so that she would not encroach on another’s space, even if she had arrived early enough to claim an entire table as her own. She was a regular, but not an outstanding one, primarily because she never caused trouble; she drank regular black coffee—no press, no pour-over, and on nights she had an exam or presentation following she would order a medium shot-in-the dark, or perhaps a two-shot Red Eye, which lived up to its namesake; her brown irises would ping-pong in their sockets once she gulped down her first cup.

I never judged the humans for their consumption, for my primary concern was finding Kara. Six weeks after opening, I had still seen neither hide nor hair of my beloved niece. Despite my running pumpkin latte specials in the “off-season.”

“I am closing soon,” I told her, as I bent to squirt glass-cleaning liquid against the refrigerated display case. We kept juices from local vendors and pastries we made in the back of the house inside it, but backpacks and fingertips and the occasional toddler’s tongue would inevitably end up smudging the exterior, so it deserved a thrice-daily cleaning.

Alexandra never looked up from her book, so I continued shutting down.

I listened to the Bluetooth speaker I had bought at an electronics shop while I did the sweeping and turned up chairs onto tabletops. The music was tuned to the university’s radio station, because I did not trust myself to select songs that the human youth found captivating. My interests often ran to pieces foreign and old, operas and songs part of a larger narrative that reminded me of Kryptonian symphonies. Yet here I stood, sweeping along to Cool Play, or The All-American Greendaze, or the woman who runs the world. Some of the melodies were interesting. Most of them were not. I swept, and thought, and wondered why I hadn’t seen some sign of Kara after six weeks.

I had forgotten that Alexandra was in the shop, and finished up the dishes and the tidying using super speed. It was my first and only slip around her. She had (has) this uncanny knack for blending into the background.

Half of the floor above my shop was my apartment, and the other half was a yoga studio owned by a man named Ryan. He seemed pleasant enough, but would not stop asking me for my “number.” I gave him several. Ten. Fifty-two. Eighteen. It was the number of couches, the number of mugs, or the number of crafts I had piloted in my life. He finally clarified and asked for my _cellphone_ number, and was devastated to discover that I did not have one. I gave him the number to the coffee shop below and told him of our monthly specials. He did not seem pleased with this information.

I finished up and moved the sign on the door from open to closed at 10:22 p.m., prepared for another two hour’s worth of marketing and coffee study before I attempted sleep. I would also return to the records of UCNC, the majority of which I had already industriously reviewed. There were no less than one hundred derivations of the name _Kara_ on the UCNC undergraduate registry, some of which, I discovered, no longer attended the school. I read name after name and attempted to track them all down, but my research did not yield any substantial results. So, I stayed awake and resolved to make the best pumpkin lattes on the planet. I did not often sleep well, and was gratified that my power-altered system did not need much rest.

I flipped the light switch but stopped, halted by Alexandra’s “Hey, wait a minute!”, once I’d plunged her into the darkness.

“Oh, my apologies,” I said, flicking the lights back on. “I’d forgotten anyone was still here.”

“I thought you’d…” Alex stopped speaking and took in the room, the upturned chairs, the scent of disinfectant and the silence from beyond, no more music pouring through the speakers and no low hum emanating from the espresso machine. She shrugged, and started packing up. “I guess I thought it would take you longer to close up.”

It doesn’t usually bother me when patrons stay after closing time, as long as they do not order anything else once I have cleaned the dishes and cashed out at the register. They can congregate and linger; I have nothing against it personally. But if I am not closing, and it is one of my workers who hold many other obligations, it is rude and inconsiderate to linger after closing time. My workers could very well be getting on with their lives and must instead wait on the final patron to pack up their things and depart.

It is the principle of the matter.

I found, for the first time in a while, that I was standing back upon principle.

“Well, we do close at 10 p.m.,” I told her, thinking of Leah’s late shift tutoring the athletes, Jeremiah’s debate, Han’s midterm.

“I know, it’s just… whenever I’d close a place down solo, it would take me almost an hour.”

“Perhaps you did not make very good use of your time, then,” I answered. I smiled, for I truly was teasing her, but from the way her jaw clenched I could tell that she had taken insult.

“Guess not,” she grumbled, tossing books and notepads and one hefty looking laptop into her bag.

“I’m sorry,” I told her, placing my hands on my hips. “I did not mean—”

“It’s fine,” she cut me off, brushing past my shoulder and heading toward the exit. “I’m out.”

“Very well, good evening, Alexandra.”

She stopped at the door and turned, quirking an eyebrow up toward the ceiling. “Sorry… did you just call me ‘Alexandra’?”

“Uhm…” I was confused by the query, and did not want to insult her again. It was imperative that this shop succeed, and alienating any human, no matter how stubborn or occasionally inconsiderate they might be, was not an option. “Yes? It is your… name?”

“How do you know that?”

“Your student card,” I answered her. “You use it for the discount.”

“You remembered my name from the card?”

“Well, and your order,” I qualified. “Black coffee with espresso shots, no sugar, no milk. That is, until I start bringing you water.” I didn’t bring up the flask she used to add whisky to her coffee some nights. “You prefer a dark roast. There is a blonde boy named Alex who orders a large salted caramel frappuccino, but you… you’re Alexandra. Black coffee. Science major, perhaps? I’ve seen your textbooks.”

“You got all that from five visits?” she asked me.

“I am extremely observant.”

“So I gathered.”

“I am sorry if that has… upset you?” Though I could not fathom why. “I want this shop to succeed. Knowing my customers’ orders speeds the process along.”

“Guess I’m not used to people noticing me.”

“How could I not notice you?”

That seemed the wrong thing to say, for she shifted awkwardly from foot to foot, and readjusted the strap of her bag as she cleared her throat. I’d made her uncomfortable.

“Yeah, well, it’s all anyone on campus talks about—the place, I mean, so good job so far,” Alexandra said. “Sorry I stayed after close. It’s just packed during the day. Like you said… you’re succeeding.”

“In some ways…” I answered cryptically, then shook my head, and addressed her for the final time that night. “Be sure to let any friends know that I have a special on pumpkin lattes.”

“It’s April.”

“I know.”

“So what’s with the special?”

“…I like them?” I lied.

“Huh,” she made a short sound, a soft chuckle, accompanied by a grin. Perhaps I had not offended her human sensibilities too much. “So does my sister.”

“Oh,” I said, for at the time, I had no idea that Kara might have integrated so fully into any family that was not my own. “Well, be sure and take her one, won’t you?”

“Sure,” she answered me, knocking her curled knuckles against the doorjamb. I could hear street sounds beyond, the occasional hoot from the dormitories three blocks over, the rush of traffic and clang of sound from a National City night. “I, uh, prefer Alex.”

“Oh, very well then.”

She walked out the door. The bell tinkled as she exited, and I hit the lights again. I hobbled about in the dark, tidying up, until a car sped by; the lightbeams struck the front wall of windows, and memory left me paralyzed.

I started and threw myself against the wall in the stairwell, having glimpsed the gleam against the gilded and steel reflections of the shop’s machinery. My heart thundered and I was at once transported to Streld’s endless deserts, looking out for the glimmer of a sniper’s weapon at the peak of the sand dunes—purple, red, green, rainbow sand, ready to gobble up any who were unfortunate enough to misstep. I replayed my conversation with Alexandra to keep myself grounded, on Earth, on a last-ditch mission to find Kara. I placed a hand against my chest and thought about Rodisia, the girl who’d taken a bullet meant for me. I slumped to the ground in the stairwell and cried, denting the handle of the broom I clutched in my grip.

I didn’t sleep that night. Sound, as I have said, was M’gann’s trigger. Reflections, glimmers, and sudden bright lights were mine.

In the morning when I flew, I tried to forget. I tried to shatter the clouds.

 

* * *

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look i get that it's all contrived and EXTREMELY unlikely for astra not to blow something up to get Kara's attention but... here we are :D 
> 
> lemme know what you're thinking if you feel so inclined! this was a really big "set-up" chapter :)


	3. Chapter 3

One week later, I saw her outside.

It was well-past midnight, but Alex was there. She sat atop some of the patio furniture I had chained down to prevent theft (then, there were no regulations that compelled me to bring sidewalk furniture inside during the evening). The neighborhood itself had not yet seen the full weight of development, but that would change in forthcoming years. Thanks in part to the success of my shop, I suppose. More regulations, more foot traffic, more hope for new customers… perhaps even Kara, one day.

She was an _undergraduate_. One to four years, I found, and then subtracted back several years, wondering if my arrival had coincided with hers. If so, Kara might have been a _sophomore_ , which meant she had two-to-three years left to complete her degree. Three years in which I might attract her here.

But that night’s story was not Kara’s.

It was Alex’s.

I left the fairy lights on at night, even on the weekends. It was a Friday, I remember, and I remember that I was somewhat drunk. I had touched down at the end of the block when I’d veered off course in my wind stream, _nudging_ a building so delicately that only a bit of rubble broke off the exterior facade. I landed shakily and produced a small crack in the sidewalk, and hoped that walking off my stupor might do me some good. The night was cool, and the breeze off the ocean felt substantial even this far inland. I shoved my hands in the pockets of a second-hand jacket and ambled down the side walk. My jacket was army green, I had once heard from M’gann. She had one that looked similar, and insisted we take a _selfie_ on her cell phone together. She also inquired as to why I did not yet have one. I told her that anyone I wished to communicate with, I knew where to find.

She could not argue with such logic.

Alex looked cold, huddled as she was against the glass paneling of the large retractable door. She was sitting atop one of the large plywood tables I had refashioned into patio furniture, and had jutted it up against the glass, as far as the chains would allow it to reach. Her back was propped against the glass panes as she hunched over her book, haloed in the soft glow from the fairy lights; her black leather jacket and tangled torrent of hair obscured features schooled into hostility, when beneath them, I only ever saw tender sentiment.

“Alex,” I said, approaching with a bit of a wobble.

She looked up quickly at me and shut her textbook, the faint _shunk_ of pages mashed against pages booming in my compromised state.

“I’m sorry, I—it’s easier to study here,” she said, by way of explanation.

“We’re closed.”

“Yeah, I… I gathered.”

“You can’t study any earlier?” I asked her.

“Work,” she shrugged, curling her fingers over the edges of her textbook. I would’ve reprimanded her for leaning against the glass, if she had not looked so comfortable in the light. I imagined she did not often feel such comfort. “And when it’s not work, it’s grading, and more studying or looking after… sorry, you don’t need to know my baggage.”

“What is it that you do?” I asked her, falling against the concrete exterior of my shop. I marveled that I did not break through the cement blocks given my level of inebriation.

“Teach, believe it or not,” Alex answered. “I’m a graduate assistant. I asked for a research track and got it, but then one of the TAs skipped out and… well, if I’m not in the lab, I’m in the classroom, and if I’m not in the classroom, I’m in the library. And the library is only open 24/7 during midterms and finals, so… I come here.”

“You want a cup of coffee?” I asked, even though I had no desire to start up any of the brewers. I did not have it in me to measure out the beans and chuck them in the grinder, or to rummage through the drawers searching for filter paper.

But Alex grinned as if she never believed I would offer such a kindness, and suddenly, it was all I wanted to do.

“You’re a lifesaver,” she said, as I dug into deep pockets for the keys to the regular side door, the entrance customers used for the rare rainy day I did not open the large retractable one.

“I have not been that in some time,” I answered, drunk, abstruse, praying desperately that she would not ask the follow-up. She didn’t that night, which was a small mercy.

She did eventually, though… Alex has never been one to merely let mysteries lie.

I flipped the kettle on and set to preparing a large carafe of Chemex pour over; at this point, six or seven weeks into my endeavor as a small business owner, the motions of coffee preparation were rote. I could fall into it as easily as I once fell into marksmanship drills with my subordinates.

_Windage calculations!_ I would yell. _Do not forget to account for your elevation and in relation to your target._

Now, it was more along the lines of _Don’t forget to run the CafeCleaner through the machine!_ at close of business.

Alex came and leaned against the bar while I puttered about, clearing my head from the night’s revelry.

I had volunteered to work a shift at the warehouse bar because M’gann was short staffed, and I was available; but I really only got to keep my tips, currency that wasn’t necessarily American. I held within my pockets the childhood memory of a Yygroat and some costume jewelry belonging to a Trancer—I had done some time on his planet and he appreciated my knowledge, gifting me with the slim, shimmery ring of element whose power I knew little of, only that it was likely worth all of ten human dollars when passed along at an alien bar. I held it tightly in my fist as I prepared the drink, happy to have found a place where other refugees congregate, equally happy to have my own place, where I could escape.

Escape did me little good this night, with Alex behind me.

“So what’s you name, anyway?” she asked me. I brought two mugs down from their shelf atop the refurbished bookcase; my customers would come in, grab a mug, self-serve and enjoy.

Just pay before you leave or I might have to snap a wrist…

(I have yet to snap a wrist, though one bagel/scone/latte pilferer will never see his pinky aligned correctly again).

“Ashley,” I lied. I had done some research into human names, and _Astra_ was not one that appeared with any frequency. _Astra In-Ze_ was for the alien bar in the warehouse district, just like M’gann M’orrz. _Megan_ and _Ashley Green_ were for tax forms and Instagram followers. Later, I would ask Connie why she didn’t go by Consuelo, and she would impart the same hesitant reason I used.

_I just want to seem normal._

“Ashley Green,” I told Alex, tilting toward the back counter.

“You don’t look like an Ashley,” she said.

“Sorry to disappoint.” I did not feel I looked like an _Ashley_ either. “Black coffee is all I can offer you. I don’t intend to start up the machine for the sake of your two espresso shots.”

“I’m fine with black coffee,” Alex answered, lugging her satchel strapped sideways over her shoulder and plunking it on the countertop. “Would you care if I studied here?”

“…I’m going to sleep, soon.” Getting drunk was one of the few ways I could fall asleep anymore.

“No, I wouldn’t hold you up,” she said. “I’m just a night owl and so is my roommate but she’s… well, it’s just hard to study in my dorm when all her friends are over playing Captain Dickhead. God, I can’t wait to get out of crappy student housing.”

“I beg your pardon?” I queried. “Captain Dickhead?”

“You’ve never played?”

“Certainly not.”

“You’re missing out.”

“Then why are you here and not back where you reside, participating in the festivities?” I took the whistling kettle off the burner and poured it over the semi-course grounds, watching as the bubbling water bled into brown filter paper.

“I told you, too busy for fun,” Alex answered. “And honestly? A little burnt out. I did my fair share of drinking games in undergrad. I’ll lock up behind me, I swear.”

“I am much too tired to refuse you,” I answered, because I was. My night of imbibing and serving and chucking handsy patrons had taken its toll; I was not accustomed to the sporadic schedule that I once handled so expertly in the army. This human job had turned me _soft_.

“And kinda drunk.”

“Yes,” I answered smartly, bringing one hand to my temple and rubbing as the dark liquid dripped into the glass well right beside me. I poured more water over the grounds and waited. “And that.”

“Good bar I don’t know about?” Alex asked, tilting her head sideways. “I never see you out and I’m… well, let’s just say I get around.”

“It’s not a place for college students,” I told her. _Or humans at all, for that matter._

“I don’t really hang out in college bars anymore, either.”

“Why not? You are still a scholar, are you not?”

“Scholar? Sure,” Alex smiled at me as I poured coffee into a mug and slid it toward her. She wrapped her long fingers around the ceramic bowl and raised it to her lips, inhaling deeply. “But I’ll be 26 in a couple’a months. Grad students just have… I don’t know, a different perspective of college. It’s not so much about drinking to relieve the stress as it is to… whatever. Forget, I guess.”

“You are not even 26 years?” I asked her, for she held the weight of many more seasons in her solemn stare.

“Almost.”

“What could you possibly have to forget, yet?” I asked her, realizing the next morning that I was being patronizing, insensitive… still drunk.

I turned to my own mug and took a sip; it was not that I even liked coffee, but I had to train my taste buds to know the difference between cheaper and more refined roasts. It did nothing for my hangovers, like human alcohol did little to compromise my system. But I needed something to distract me from Alex’s hurt expression, and the mug was the closest thing in reaching distance.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” she said, cracking her book to signal the end of our conversation.

I flicked on the lamp I kept near the register so she wouldn’t strain her eyes. In her book were pictures of anatomical insides labeled for her study, organs black and red and hi-definition pictures that reminded me of the field hospitals. With that much alcohol still in my system, my stomach turned. I needed to leave, and fast.

“If I leave the key, will you…?”

“Yeah, definitely. Thanks a million.”

“Sure. This is… is an exception, so you know. Do not bring more of your fellow co-eds after hours.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Alex would not tell me until much later that she did not have any fellow co-eds that she felt comfortable asking anywhere. It was a shame that she never did make many friends in college.

“This is practically a one-time thing anyway,” she hollered as I staggered to the foot of the stairs, on the way up to my small flat. “I’m moving to my own apartment in the summer and can keep it as quiet as I want. To study, you know.”

“Congratulations,” I replied, lost for more words. I ascended the stairs and collapsed on my couch, leaving Alex to her books.

When I came back down six hours later, fuzzy-headed but ready to open the shop, I found Alex asleep, head flopped over her notebook and pencil still in hand. The lead calculations smudged on her papers had transferred to her skin, beautiful mathematics tattooed to her cheek.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

It was not a one-time thing after all.

Alex did eventually move into her apartment, but she also kept coming by the shop to study. _Summer school,_ she told me. Nine times out of ten I would close, and she was never disruptive.

Which was surprising, because she kept sneaking flasks onto the premises.

At that point, she was little more than a clever human patron. She ordered black coffee, and would take a pumpkin latte to go with her once she’d concluded her review session. At the time, I believed she pitied how desperately I was trying to sell them, and how few I actually sold. I never suspected the person I was trying to lure here never came because Alex was hand-delivering her favorite liquid treat to her. It was how I realized that Alex would always watch after Kara, even if it meant saving 15 minutes of her precious time to bring her younger sister a coffee.

But I didn’t know about Kara when I first started interacting with Alexandra—with Alex.

To me, it was a somewhat benevolent transaction; I provided her with a place to study, and she rewarded me by helping with my social media management (and a bit of my social skills concerning humans).

Our arrangement worked out well, or so I believed, until the evening I unintentionally hurt her.

“I mean, it’s not that what you’re doing isn’t working. Obviously you’ve got a crowd,” she told me one night as she scrolled through the photos on my tablet. I was not one to painstakingly photograph and edit a picture of a scone tilted askew, crumbly sugar bits falling over the sides like snow tumbling off a pastry mountain (Jeremiah was rather elaborate with his metaphors). “But you’re looking to reach a wider audience?”

“Yes,” I answered, because Kara.

Kara, Kara always. Three months now, and it was still for Kara. I’d even considered more drastic measures for finding the girl—billboard rentals, hovering in the sky, something violent, if I had to—but having interacted with humans long enough to know their devotion to Superman, I knew I could not risk doing anything that would set Kal-El against me. I was sure that he knew of Kara and was purposefully keeping my existence a secret from her; he could just as easily poison her mind and compound what doubts she already held concerning me.

“Well, there’s plenty of subscription services out there that measure SEO and do your social media analytics for you,” Alex told me, pulling me back from thoughts of Kara. “You just have to register your accounts and pay by the month.”

“Can you set that up for me?” I asked her.

“Yeah, sure,” Alex smiled.

It was after hours and once again, she and I were the only ones at Brigadier’s Brewers. It was nice having another person in the room; I could turn off the music and concentrate on her heartbeat. She didn’t seem to mind the ambient noise, my sweeping, washing, counting, stocking. We were just two bodies occupying the same space, and it was easy.

“Wonderful,” I answered her, thinking—at that time—that any little bit of reach would help, even if it was more digital than tangible. “Here, I have something for you.”

I passed the envelope over the counter where her coffee mug had formed a ring on top of the wood. I was not one to stand on ceremony with _coasters_ , but for some reason that evening every little detail registered: the water mark from the mug; the way Alex’s hands shook slightly when she touched the paper; the fairy lights outside, flickering; the burble of the coffee maker behind me, the warmth pouring off of the hot plate where the carafe rested; Alex’s black leather jacket and shiny silver zippers, jangling whenever she swiveled on the stool; my own complicity in the exchange, for it was one of the first deals I’d done with a human I didn’t dislike.

Connie, Han, Jeremiah and Leah were all under my charge, since they had signed on to be my employees. I liked my workers. Felt protective of them, in a sense, for they all seemed so starry-eyed and _young._

Alex was different. A contractor, but not really a contractor at all. Not a friend, or else I would have taken that flask and poured it right down the sink. An acquaintance, in those first few months, with whom I bartered services for space. I never asked her why she kept coming back to the shop to study when she had an apartment, paid for by her GA’s stipend, all to herself. She did tell me, eventually, that she disliked the crowds in the library, and there was no guarantee that she would get a plug. She told me that she didn’t trust herself alone. She told me, after over two years of knowing each other, that she was drawn to me in ways she didn’t understand at the time.

That night, Alex acted on feelings she couldn’t put a name to. She looked down to the envelope and peeked inside.

“A key?”

“So you can come and go as you please, to study on the weekends. It seems like sufficient enough payment,” I answered her.

“Oh,” she said, taking the key in hand, turning the cool metal over and over in her palms. “Well… uhm…”

“Yes?” I prompted her. I pushed my arm through the sleeve of my jacket, and moved my hair out from beneath the collar. I removed my glasses, readjusted my _beanie_ hat, all under Alex’s steady stare. I was leaving to see M’gann shortly and was in a bit of a rush, designing to leave Alex to her study. I couldn’t know then what she had been struggling with.

“Ashley?” she asked me, and I stood expectantly, hands crossed over my chest as the light from the tablet faded to black, darkening Alex's face. “You uh… you ever wanna go get a drink sometime?”

I motioned to the pair of mugs steaming on the counter before us.

“As we have been doing… frequently… for the past few weeks?” I asked her, though I know my tone was impatient. I would get that way with my workers, when they would do something unnecessarily _human_ , or when I would speed through three orders because I had not checked my pace. Coffee shops during rushes are filled with so much noise and steam and spills and straw wrappers that not many people notice; but I did (do) oftentimes grown impatient.

As I was that evening.

I did not fully understand what she was asking of me-- _a drink?_ \--like Ryan asking for my _number_.

Little did I know, she’d been working up the courage for weeks, and I’d been so preoccupied with seeing M’gann again that I didn’t notice Alex’s heart shattering before me.

Alex laughed uncertainly and made a face that I cannot put a name to, embarrassment, doubt, dismay—as if she had sucked onto something bitter and sour.

“Or you know, at a bar?" she explained. "Talk about… stuff.”

“My apologies, Alex, but is this pressing?” I brushed her off, and there she sat, aching. “I have to meet up with someone.”

“Oh,” her voice fell. “Uh, hot date?”

“Not really hot,” I said, looking down at my jacket. Misunderstanding. Always. “Though it is… a scheduled _date_ ,” I elaborated, thinking about my recurring meet-ups with M’gann. She had lost one of her regular Brellxish bar maids to some foul enterprise that she would not fully explain. I was prepared to get to the bottom of her missing wait staff that evening, for it was the third time that month I had covered someone's shift at the warehouse.

“Lock up after you’re finished, please?” I told Alex, slipping carelessly through the back door to the alley.

While at the bar, I discovered what I had hoped I wouldn't: that M'gann had been recruiting her workers into the combative matches with Roulette, and that, slowly, they stopped trickling into work their shifts. I knew from the outset that the entire nefarious enterprise would end in more harm than good, and I expressed my passionate concern in as many words to M'gann that evening. We quarreled, I stormed out, and for some reason, found myself looking forward to checking in with Alex before I attempted sleep that evening.

Alex was not there when I returned. In fact, she stayed away for the rest of the summer even though I had given her the key to the shop. I would not see her again for several weeks, and when I did, she would be coming apart at the seams.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

I began taking courses in environmental ethics and ecology that fall. It took a bit of falsification once again, a forged diploma from an international school, some hastily typed letters of recommendation, a study that I carried out on freshwater fish from a river in Indiana in just under a week, and, a manipulated time stamp as to when my undergraduate paper was published in the research journal. By all accounts, Ashley Green was a nontraditional student from Arizona returning to pursue her doctorate after years abroad—if anyone in class asked me, I told them I had been a soldier. I didn’t elaborate, and my classmates rarely asked for details. It was not a lie.

I took evening classes, long, three-hour blocks of lecture and lab work that I sped through, all so I could return to the shop to relieve Leah and close everything down. I was nearly two months into my courses when I scurried out of my class that ended near nine p.m.; I collided with another frazzled student and her armload of papers.

“Fucking shit!” she swore, as I stooped to help gather her lost materials.

“My apologies, I didn’t look where I was—Alexandra,” I said, taken aback. It had been weeks since that midsummer night when I had given her the key to the shop. She hadn’t been by, but then I recalled her rigorous course work and her unforgiving schedule. My social media marketing had made steady strides on every platform, so she seemed to be holding up her end of the deal, even if she never capitalized on my repayment by visiting the shop after hours.

I realized then I had missed seeing her. The disarming smile; that comfortable, slightly worn leather jacket; the long, tangled brown hair and the student satchel that had certainly seen better days. The flush of her skin. Brown eyes so warm and sad I found myself sinking.

But that night in the science building, she looked different: harried, jittery, and nervous. Her face was pale, her cheeks concave against strikingly sharp cheekbones. Had she been eating? Subsisting solely on caffeine? Had she been pouring more and more of that amber liquid into her drinks to forget whatever weight pressed so insistently upon her 26-year-old shoulders?

She looked at me, and was shocked; she looked at me like I was the last person she wanted to see.

“Alex, I’m sorry,” I said, standing as she shuffled pages one behind the other, stuffing them into one of those clear plastic page holders that I’d seen final research pieces submitted in.

“’s not your fault,” she mumbled, staring behind me, sidestepping with an agility that I’d never have suspected in such a nervous human frame. “Dr. Newell!” she shouted.

“You’ve missed the deadline, _again_ , Alex,” the man—presumably Dr. Newell—told her.

I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I still had to gather all the materials that _I_ had dropped. I felt a little guilty, lingering as I did on the floor of the science building, when I could have sped out of there and saved Alex her embarrassment.

“It’s eight fifty-four!” Alex protested. “I had a family emergency, I promise, it won’t happen again—”

“Which is what you said last semester, per you final report submission with the medical review board.”

“I can bring an accident report!” Alex seemed to be on the brink of tears. “I… I swear, there was an issue with the bus, I had to get my sister out of there because she had class and—”

“I’m sure your sister will be grateful that she made it to her midterms on time,” Dr. Newell sighed. “But the penalty will still stand. You work is brilliant, Alexandra, but I have to ask… do you really have your priorities in order to pursue this type of study? A deadline is one thing while you’re in school, but we’re speaking of life and death when you’re altering how basic human anatomy functions.”

“I understand the importance, sir, I do. I’m just—I—I’ve just got a lot going on—”

“You know the operating room is full of distractions? You know one miscalculation in a drug trial can render the entire project moot, correct?”

“Of course sir, I’m sorry, I—”

“I’ll take it, but Alex, please, I can only make so many more excuses for your behavior to the board.”

“I’m sorry, I—I’m just sorry.”

“Good night, Alex,” Dr. Newell stuffed the collection of misaligned papers into his briefcase and took off toward the faculty offices. Alex, believing herself alone, bonked her forehead against the wall in the hallway.

“Missed deadline?” I ventured, still crouched on the floor for some reason. I didn’t want to leave her in such a state. Her make up was dark and smudged beneath her eyes. Her hair looked tangled, and she had a large bruise on her upper arm. She also favored her left side—I was surprised that a teacher of medical doctors did not notice.

“Another one,” Alex grumbled.

“Would you like… to discuss it?” I asked her. I oftentimes would feel relief after speaking with M’gann, and I hoped to offer Alex that same emotional buffer.

“No,” she said, and then, “No thank you.”

“Coffee, then?” I asked, rising from my spot on the floor. Leah would expect me back shortly, and I did not like to set a poor example for my employees by being late for a shift. “I have not seen you in some time, Alexandra. It’s the least I can offer when I’ve been receiving such good traffic on my social sites. I… have not thanked you for your efforts.”

“Coffee,” she said, though not with any measure of excitement. “Sure.”

The shop was five blocks from the science complex. UCNC buildings were sporadically situated amongst apartments and office spaces, shops, restaurants, cafes like mine, and a single park. On the west side of uptown, the beach was barely a ten minute’s drive in moderate traffic. I walked everywhere, and when I didn’t walk, I flew. It was September… no, the start of October, and I was finally selling more pumpkin lattes.

“You’re in school?” she finally asked. I imagine she did not find the silence between us comfortable.

“Yes,” I responded. “I am studying ecology.”

“You were taking the night class with… Henderson, right?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t know he did intro stuff at night. It’s not on the semester schedule.”

“I’m in his research methods seminar,” I explained.

Alex stopped on the sidewalk. “The… the one for doctoral candidates?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, I… I just… you run a shop.”

I tilted my head, perplexed, wondering if her injuries had jarred her senses as well. “Yes?”

“I didn’t know you’d gone to college before, or… I don’t know. I guess I coulda figured out you would be into green study, what with all your recycling signs and locally grown options. Anti-GMOs—”

“GMOs have acquired a bad reputation,” I challenged her. “People do not understand the nuance and benefits of such products.”

“So… you’re not a hippie, then?”

“I do not know what that means,” I told her.

She smiled for the first time that night, and I felt my chest grow tight. It was a strange feeling M’gann would torment me about later. Shortly after our argument that summer night Alex left, I had forgiven M'gann's recklessness with her employees. She was still in semi-cahoots with Ms. Sinclair, but thankfully, the exhibitions had become less frequent. M'gann was stable. I was stable.

Until Alex walked back into my life.

“I don’t get you,” Alex told me.

I shrugged, then walked to the curb to flag down one of the few cabs that roamed the streets near campus.

“The shop’s only a few blocks—”

“You’re favoring your left side,” I told her. “It’s not an obvious limp, but you are injured. You didn’t tell your professor that the bus you were taking had been in a wreck,” I deduced. I then opened up the cab door, and pointed inside. “Why would you do that?”

She clenched her jaw and held her bag tighter across her body. I wondered what was going on with her, what she was thinking, if she knew that the bruises on her arms could have led to snapped tendons and hairline fractures.

“Excuses…” she trailed off.

“In or out, lady?” the cabbie called.

“Alex?”

She pushed past me and crawled in, and we traveled the four remaining blocks in silence.

Until I said, “Soldier.”

“What?” Alex asked.

“I took time off from—before I opened the shop, I was a soldier.”

“Oh,” Alex replied, tapping her thumbs against her thigh. I could tell she was struggling with her next question, but I didn’t expect it to be so frank: “Did you ever—kill anybody?” she whispered.

The cabbie looked up quickly into the rearview mirror, pupils widening at the inquiry. I stared him down and his eyes returned to the road.

“Yes.”

Alex nodded and looked out the window, quiet as we drove on. I felt the need to explain.

“I do not put stock in the same things others do,” I told her. “I have the shop out of necessity for a living, but I know in the long run, I am providing a service. It will not bring significant change.”

“Do you want to do that?” Alex asked. “Fight for something?”

“I’ve grown weary of fighting,” I answered her. “It would take something great to pull me back into that lifestyle. For now, I will study diligently, and see what little difference I can make for this planet. I will mentor my workers as best I can, and try not to roll my eyes when they talk about the feet ball, or Drake Delaurier and Canton Brooks and LaDarius Conner—”

“Who are those people?”

“One of my employees tutors the athletes on campus,” I explained to her. “I am not one for sport.”

“I gathered that when you called it _feet_ ball,” Alex grinned, which was pleasant to see.

We both climbed out when the cabbie came to a stop, and I used some tip money from that morning to pay the fare.

“The bus… there was a wreck,” Alex started. She clutched the strap of her bag; it ran from her right shoulder and across her chest, ending where her bag rested against her left hip. She toed the gravel on the sidewalk with her scuffed black boots; I remember thinking how attractive she seemed then, during all those times I saw her standing golden in the fairy lights.

“My sister and I were on our way to campus, we… we’d been downtown at the planetarium.”

“You…” I felt that tight something that had been in my chest solidify and roll upward, like a stone fighting gravity. It took up residence in my throat, and I found it hard to swallow. “You like the stars, Alexandra?”

“Alex,” she told me again.

“Right… right.”

“My sister’s a fan,” Alex answered me, looking skyward. “Me too, I guess. Anyway, the bus… it got pretty banged up. So did everybody on board. The other car… not everybody made it.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Alex.”

“Again, not your fault. Sorry I was rude when I bumped into you earlier.”

“You do not need to apologize. Were the—did the first responders not—”

“Not quick enough,” Alex cut her off. “But that’s not even the damage control I had to run, you know? I just… keeping her… with everybody watching, all the time, it’s hard to make her feel like she can…or she shouldn’t…”

“She?”

“Never mind,” Alex waved her hand in front of her face and winced, clutching her side.

“I’m guessing you came straight from the accident with your paper?”

“They kept me at the scene forever to give my report, then they realized I didn’t need medical attention. I had the paper printed, but by the time I got back to my apartment to pick it up… it doesn’t matter now, I guess.”

“Perhaps I can get you a bag of ice for your bruising?” I offered.

“Thanks,” Alex said.

Leah bolted out the door when I came to relieve her. She’d mentioned a date with the boyfriend who was constantly hanging over the glass countertops. Leah would push him off, and then furiously clean where his sweaty elbows had smudged the display. Apparently, such insubordination was attractive when one could throw the ball through the field-post-net-hoop.

Alex moved toward the bookcase and took her customary mug, white, with a blue circular field and the NASA symbol printed right on the side. I donned my maroon apron and pulled my hair back, placing the customary _beanie_ hat upon my head. I poured Alex her coffee and checked in with the three remaining patrons, then I disappeared to the back and filled up a large plastic bag with ice from the machine. The little squares plopped and broke apart in the bag as I covered it with a wet dishtowel.

“Did you learn this overseas?” Alex asked me as I took my place behind the counter, filling the portafilter and tamping down the espresso grounds into a perfectly proportioned puck.

“First-aid?”

“Yeah.”

“What seas?”

“Wherever you served?” Alex said. “Army? Air Force?”

“Oh, I… I…”

Alex ducked her head to keep eye contact. “Ashley?”

“I don’t… really like to talk about it,” I said, which was true. I hadn’t fired a weapon in—well, with my time spent in the Phantom Zone, I could not know how long it had been. The last person I fought, I broke so badly it took months to put her back together.

“You know, you don’t look like a soldier,” Alex said.

“No?”

“Nah, you carry yourself like one, but… I don’t know, I’m just…” Alex made some noncommittal noise, but now she had my attention.

“I don’t look like an Ashley, I don’t look like a soldier… I suppose I wouldn’t look like a barista if I wasn’t standing here, preparing your coffee.”

“No, it’s just… you’re so… like, you know how you see someone and they’re doing something that just doesn’t suit them? Like they could be so much… _more_ than what they are?”

"Like what I see when I look at you?"

Alex jerked her head up from where she'd taken out her book. Her mouth gaped open slightly, and I wondered--as I have wondered on far too many occasions--what desperate thoughts were swirling around in her head. She had no answer for me, then. On days when her doubts plague her, I still have to remind her of how wonderful she is. Back then, she could never have imagined. Back then, I was just starting to see it.

“What is it that you see me as, then?” I asked her.

Alex shook her head and started rifling through her satchel.

“No, what was it you were going to say?” I prompted. “If not a soldier, then what?”

“Well, maybe a little bit of a soldier when you get all defensive,” Alex chuckled. “But definitely not a barista, either.”

“What?!” I asked, somewhat offended. I had studied magazines and taken detailed field notes of the attire of nearby café workers.

“You’re just… I don’t know, I can’t explain it.”

I drew up to my most imposing posture, that poise I channeled when I was in the war room with my Lieutenants. “Make an attempt,” I commanded.

Alex turned her head sideways and tilted her chin at me, then shifted on the stool. “You mind?” she asked, extending her hand near my face. The look I gave was surely skeptical, but it’s not as if the woman could hurt me. She tugged the beanie from my head and I felt her hands brush some of my curls away from my face. She accidentally nudged the frames of my glasses. I do not know if she lingered there momentarily, over the white strip I’d worn as a reminder of sacrifice. But I do remember that first brush of her knuckle near my brow, and the way her face lit up when she’d finished her rearranging.

“I don’t know,” Alex repeated. “You seem… so much bigger than this place. Haunted I guess, like a soldier. Much too pretty to be wearing a beanie on your head,” Alex said, tugging my grey knitted piece over her own ears with a small smile.

“Well, the same applies to you,” I told her, and heard the smallest of gulps catch in her throat.

“You think so?” she whispered.

Some slow song was playing over the Bluetooth speakers; I heard the bell over the door ding as one of my last customers exited for the evening. Alex smelled like coffee but underneath, somewhere around her bruising, I sniffed bloodied steel.

“I don’t know if haunted is the proper word for you,” I ventured, wondering if we were breaching some all-important level of companionship that I had once passed through with M’gann. “You do look sad so very often, Alex,” I told her. She blinked at me, and her eyes shuttered down toward the counter. The cap drooped off the back of her head and blended in with her tangles, as if her entire aura had faded from that golden glow to desolate, dreary grey.

“Though, you do wear that hat much better than I do,” I amended uncertainly.

Her lips quirked when she took the bag of ice I’d prepared for her and stuffed it under her shirt. “You gonna let me keep it?” she ventured.

“If you like it all that much,” I told her, for I was in no short supply of silly human clothing. I had fortunately mended my battle suit, but I did not think I would be able to wear it for any human occasion. “It simply suits you.”

“What?” Alex laughed, cocking one incredulous brow skyward. The hat flopped about on her head, and I finally recognized why that solid feeling was roaming from gut to chest, and then to my throat, like a nomad seeking refuge in different portions of my torso. I smiled, for I finally recognized the draw for what it was—somewhat thrilled to find that I could still recognize beauty after everything I’d been through.

“You’re quite attractive,” I said, and then I heard the ice bag go  _splat_ against the floor.

“Oh, shit,” she said, scrabbling off the stool and wincing as she stooped.

“In the conventional humanoi—human sense. Despite your terrible clumsiness,” I laughed, deep, as I hadn’t in a while, at least not since the last time I was on service at the warehouse bar. Alex wrestled the bag away from the floor as another customer approached the counter, so I nodded toward her to signal that I’d seen her. “Sorry, let me go get her,” I told Alex, who had finally emerged from the floor, and who was studying her coffee with the same attention she paid to her textbooks. She’d hastily shoved the ice pack back up her shirt before even brushing the wet towel off. I wished she wouldn’t have. I swept that floor nightly and knew how disgusting it could be.

I was speaking with Helena, a semi-regular who preferred a medium vanilla latte with skim, when I overheard Alex quietly muttering _oh my god, oh my god_ , over and over under her breath.

 

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Little bit longer update y'all. Going out of town for work this week and probably won't get a chance to edit the next bit until next weekend. Also a reassurance to those following any other fic that I AM working on it. Mermaid!AU and Dearly Departed have several scenes for the next chapters already written up. Just gotta find time to make sure it all makes sense plot-wise. 
> 
> also, bc a couple'a people mentioned something in the comments, i went ahead and made a brigadiers_brewers account on instagram :P i make no promises as to the quality of posts!
> 
> Thank you for reading my story! Drop a comment if you feel so led :D


	4. Chapter 4

 

 

The following weekend, I tackled her.

Well, perhaps _tackle_ is a bit inaccurate, as it was more of a brush on my part, and a sprawling cartwheel on hers. Momentum was her enemy, and the Earth’s sun my rather irksome ally. After my usual morning flight, I had touched back down to the ground in an alley three blocks from my shop and had taken the rest of the return at a sprint, still not quite sure of what humans considered an overly swift pace. In all honestly, I likely would have noticed her coming—however, as such events are likely to unfold—we barreled into each other thanks to the perfect storm of city-street commotion: the truck unloading produce at the market on the corner was disrupted by the barking stray who had nearly caused the Mercedes to swerve into a street lamp; then there was the small gaggle of pedestrians in spandex with a stroller far too large to be rolling along a sidewalk; add to that the lack of a stop light, Kryptonian speed, and Alex’s tunnel-vision when she blasts that distorted metal music into her ear canals, and the intersection of Nineteenth and Waverley seemed prime for a collision that morning. She fell over the dog and I fell _through_ a crate, but somehow, Antonio (from the corner market stand) and I stopped the stroller from rolling wheel-first into the path of the oncoming vehicle.

Call it luck or humanity’s physical ineptitude, but I suppose I came off as quite heroic in that instance, despite being overwhelmed by the din of the incident: babies were babbling and their mother was crying; off to the side, Antonio and Emil were rattling and banging crow bars against the broken crate boards, hoping to scare the barking dog off; the Mercedes’s alarm system had been activated in the melee, and was blaring out the most annoying siren into the National City morning.

My attention was quartered and divided to each sporadic component of the action, focus drifting to every player, every obstacle, until I honed in on Alex’s heartbeat—the one familiar sound in the chaos. It pattered like rapid artillery fire, popping and thumping and outpacing her heaving pants; she had high color in her cheeks, an astonished look on her face, and lay curled on her side as I shot upright into a defensive stance, attempting to hush the squealing child—no, _children_ in the pram.

“ _Antonio, donde esta sus madre?”_

“Por aqui, Ashley,” Antonio answered, waving his hand aloft at the crowd on the corner.

The mother was beside herself, Antonio shaken, the driver incensed, and Alex… I suppose at the time she was confused. Though later she would tell me that the day on the corner, she knew something had been _off_ about me. My reaction time. My speed. An instant too quick for a human. The pieces fell too perfectly for me to prevent the freak accident as I had, and she had bared witness to it all.

Then, there were the children—the _twins_. Two identical sets of watery brown eyes with drool dribbling down their chins looked up at my own bewildered face while gnawing contentedly on their multicolored chew toys. Two little human boys in matching outfits, one with a discolored birth mark on his forehead that had already begun to fade. Blissfully unaware that their lives could have been cut short seconds ago. Blank and innocent.

“Ashley, la chica le está llamando.”

By the time I’d turned back round, Alex was up on her feet in a sea of oranges and dog hair. The crate I’d splintered open had contained a week’s worth of produce, which now streamed into the street. The mutt was nosing the round citrus balls along the sidewalk while the jogging mothers fussed over the twins and Antonio took stock of his… well, what was left of his stock.

That left Alexandra to me.

“Alex.”

“You ran through a crate!”

“The car,” I said, shrugging at the man with the popped tire across the street, the airbags deflated like sad balloons after a party. “And the oranges and the kids—”

“You came flying around that corner.”

“No, I certainly did not!” My feet were very much on the ground (fine, perhaps _hovering_ , but there was no way she could’ve known, then).

“Jeez, I just mean… do you always sprint on crowded city sidewalks? In a spandex… body suit?”

Oh.

_Oh._

Right. The battle suit. Perfect for flying and quick returns to the shop, less perfect when attempting to assimilate into human culture. I should have been able to make the remaining three blocks with ease, but of course, human clumsiness was once again to blame for my predicament. She tilted her head in study of my clothing and eyed the material, her gaze roving over the cuffs against my wrists, the slope of the fabric at my waist, the high collar, the form-fitting bands round my thighs.

“Uh… military leftover,” I muttered, waiting for her interrogation. For a long time she simply looked at me, a black, uncomfortable column in a sea of citrus. “Alex?”

She finally shook her head and tip-toed through the oranges. “They let you keep it?”

“Prototype,” I lied, stooping to my knees to salvage what I could of Antonio’s product. “Water repellant, wind-resistant, self-cleaning—”

“What do you mean, self-cleaning?”

Apparently that feature had not yet been achieved for human raiment.

“Coffee?” I asked, as means of distraction. “It’s the least I could do for nearly trampling you so early on your weekend.”

“I was on my way to the shop anyway,” Alex said. “I had… hoped I’d run into you.”

“Well,” I grinned, tossing an orange up at her. She caught it easily, with her quick reflexes and her bright, surprised smile. “Mission accomplished, Alex Danvers.”

“I didn’t mean so literally,” she joked with me, extending a hand down to my level. I took it, and she pulled me up, glancing past my shoulder to where the other jogging mothers had moved on, then back to Antonio and his shop boy. “Everyone looks like they’re back to normal, but are you sure you’re alright?” she gave my hand a squeeze before dropping it and I nearly started flying again. “You literally sailed straight through those two-by-fours. I know you’re G. I. Jane walking, but damn, Ashley.”

“Me?” I asked, a little confused by the phrasing. But from her soft eyes, the hand against my forearm, the edge of worry at her voice… I think it was the first time someone had shown any degree of concern for my physical state aside from M’gann. “Yes, just… I suppose I had momentum on my side.”

“That poor crate never stood a chance,” she said, taking in the damage of the blasted wood and broken boards.

“Tonio! Necesitas ayudar?”

Antonio waved me off, so I turned back to Alex, settled my hands on my hips, and tried to feel less nervous about her staring. I failed. The suit had a thermal regulator built in as well, but for some reason, I felt terribly hot around my collar.

“So, coffee?”

“Please.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The shop was fairly busy, as it always is on weekend mornings. Jerry, Han, and Connie were like bees in their hive, flitting hither and yon to produce the bitter-sweet nectar that sustained the population. I felt rather light—I could not tell you whether it was the morning or the flight or my colossal overdose on human citrus fruits (it was Alexandra’s company, her care, the way she moved that morning like she hadn’t taken to drink the night before).

She followed me inside and I escaped behind the counter, waving her past the line and pointing at the display case.

“Breakfast?”

“I’d kill for a bagel.”

“So violent,” I mocked, reaching in with the sanitation paper and withdrawing a warm, cinnamon-dusted bagel. She had requested the strawberry cream cheese one morning, and I remembered, so I tossed the contents into a sack and handed it to her over the counter. Han looked to me after I bade Alex grab her morning black coffee from the opposite counter, wondering why I’d gone about serving someone who hadn’t been in line.

I was quite the stickler for waiting one’s turn.

“She does not need to pay,” I told my crew, waving my hand above the counter and toward the back staircase. Alex quirked her brow, hovering behind the growing line as I tried to direct her movements with industrious arm flailing and head nodding. Eventually, she shouldered her way through the line and back to the half door that swings open onto the floor near the pick-up counter.

“Carry on,” I commanded, turning over my shoulder toward the staircase, Alex following in my footsteps. There was the regular commotion of the shop happening below, but I could still hear my workers chattering:

“Did—did Ashley just take another woman to her apartment?” Han.

“Isn’t that the girl who’s in here late at night?” Connie, at the island in the middle, over ice crackling in the blenders.

“Ashley’s such a badass. Banging grad students, paying like, a living wage. Did you see that _legend_ fashion jumpsuit she was wearing? Girl’s gonna put Nike outta business.” Jeremiah, talking in absolute circles around my understanding.

I had no intentions of bringing Alex to my flat, but the shop is so loud in the mornings it can become difficult for humans to hear. For me, it’s… well, it’s a good thing sounds are not my trigger.

“Toaster?” I asked, pointing toward Alex’s bagel.

“Uh, sure,” she said, handing off her breakfast, pacing into the sitting area.

The flat was small. Utilitarian. Unadorned and rather cold. I felt embarrassed suddenly, for only M’gann had ever visited the apartment I’d considered intimate, a bit of my own space. But I had nothing, really, nothing to remind me of my home, nothing personal, no keepsakes or reminders, none of my sister’s paintings that had adorned every hallway of the mansion back on Krypton:

On Krypton my riches were waste. I had furniture imported thanks to the lift on sanctions with off-world trade. I had the thickest, most luxurious rugs; hand-stitched patterns depicting embattled histories of cultures I had touched for only a moment, and found myself wanting a keepsake. My space was a veritable museum, chronicling all of the places I’d ever been. Settees and lounges. Desks and projectors. Anti-gravity, adjustable counter tops made from Gromarxian minerals that would change color with the theme of each cycle, all six seasons. I had curtains, heavy and flowing, something of a vintage accessory on Krypton, when the retractable shades from the red sun’s radioactivity became requisite for all properties within the capital city.

Alura’s paintings, massive canvases, spackled with color and blended into shape, were crafted merely with my words, with the images I described to her and of what she had read. She never dared look at images of the planets for reference; occasionally, she would recall a bit of the terrain when we’d studied intergalactic geographies in lower Instruction Levels, but so much of what she completed was dreamt up in that marvelous mind of hers. I think of all the art work Krypton lost; those sculpted battle tableaus carved into the mountains at Kishlon; the heavy-handed charcoal renderings of Tu-Pel and Kamora Tu-Pel in the outer provinces; the earliest, most ancient woven grasses, preserved for many millennia, of reeds from our oldest ancestors.

Gone.

Burned to nothing.

I have a stainless steel toaster on a linoleum counter top built in the 80s, according to the housing specs; no closet, poor lighting, and a dull rug I found on sale, mass-produced from a Target. There’s a pull-out sofa that I do make-up every morning (the military never truly leaves me) and a television that I rarely use. I gather most of my news from the radio; I tune to 98.8 KATR, a station that seems to deliver the best information on the city, the state, the nation—CatCo Radio, if I’m remembering correctly.

It was clean, but it was bland. There was so little of me in the place, and I only realized it the second Alex walked across the threshold; had I found myself in another’s home, in the space they called _theirs_ , I would have studied every inch of the place. You can tell so much about a person from their home, from cataloging their heirlooms, those items they deem precious. The only item I wanted to take with me from Rozz was my suit, more for the fact that I needed something to wear than that it held any degree of sentiment. Yet now, as I stood in my small kitchen, I felt more connected to the silly fabric issued to every officer in the Military Guild than I ever had before.

I was overcome, ill-prepared for what having Alex—anyone—in my apartment might mean.

“It burns, sometimes,” I told Alex, who was looking curiously out of the window to the west side. “The toaster,” I clarified. “You might want to watch over it. The settings are broken and I… I need to change.”

I walked toward the rack I used to hang my clothing—black and blue and the occasional maroon material for the sake of the shop’s colors—but again, nothing of me.

Green is my favorite color.

Alex learned that early on.

There was no green on Krypton, none naturally occurring any way. Not in my lifetime. Not in Kara’s. Everything was burned and scorched, gilded, flaming. There was synthetic green on the spectrum, and I knew of other planets with their verdant forests, abounding with green, olive, emerald, every exquisite variation.

The only green I ever saw occur naturally was from something Krypton deemed _unnatural_.

When I looked into my sister’s eyes.

When I looked into my own.

I escaped to the bathroom and attempted to pull myself together. The morning had begun so wonderfully—flight, a fortuitous collision that had me running into someone that I was rapidly beginning to think of as a _friend_. But then this… this acute feeling of being blindsided by inadequacy, or perhaps by nostalgia, perhaps by another degree of grief I had repressed… I twisted the taps and splashed cold water on my face, hesitating, but eventually facing myself in the mirror. I prodded at my cheek, the skin there tight, that first wrinkle I had panicked over decades ago still present at the corner of my eye, but no others have joined it. My legacy is a blip on the intergalactic radar and a planet reduced to ash; I cannot even claim that I left a refugee. Given what I knew at the time, I would’ve rather died with my planet than have had to bare the knowledge of its loss.

Languages. Maps. Fashion. Our culture, our arts, our histories and our technologies. I am not a refugee because I never wanted to flee. I am something of a castoff, a leftover, living on this Earth by some twisted turn of gravitational chance.

But Kara.

_Kara_.

Kara is here, of all the planets in the universe our prison could have crashed on, we ended up on the same one as _Kara_.

I patted and lightly slapped my cheeks with more water to shake myself from depression. Such thoughts hadn’t visited me since my recovery with M’gann, and I couldn’t fall prey to them now. The past eight or so months with this shop were not bringing her here, so perhaps it was time for me to make myself more visible. More public. At least, in the university setting, which is where Kara most definitely was. But then… if she’s had the same experience as Kal-El, and as me…she possesses these powers as I do.

I always knew, in the back of my mind, that if Kara was truly on this planet, she would have flight, laser vision, and indestructibility at her disposal. She likely did not use her icy breath to resolidify slushy frappucinos, but her eye sight would be impeccable, her hearing so acute it would border on agitating.

Had she done just as I had?

Assimilated? Hidden? Tried to seem as normal as she could by keeping her head down, her focus tuned to every idiotic interest the humans deemed en vogue?

Coffee houses are not uncommon, but perhaps she had not wanted to break routine. Perhaps she had a very strict, very _human_ schedule. In that case, an assumed name might work against me, but I had to keep what little history I had already cultivated. My face, however… Kara could never forget my face.

She could never forget Alura.

I stepped out in my maroon pants and black v-neck shirt, tied up my hair, and found my glasses on the counter top. Alex was hovering over the island with a butter knife pilfered from the cutlery drawer, scraping strawberry cream cheese onto her bagel.

“Thought I’d lost you there, for a second,” she said, swirling the last bit of cream onto the bread. “Want half?”

“No, but thank you. I’ll have my cereal. You should eat,” I said, even though I was famished. My morning flight was the most exertion I would expend during the day, so I always pushed myself to the brink of my physical limits. But half a bagel would do little good when I usually ate a half dozen in a sitting. Plus, Alex had probably judged me for my depressing decoration (or lack thereof) in the flat; I could not have her think me a heathen once I pounced on twelve halves of baked multigrain circles.

“So,” Alex said, crunching around a mouthful of bagel. She sipped at her coffee, and I busied myself with preparing some orange juice and grabbing my box of Fruity Bits and Bites. Of all the human confections I’ve encountered, that cereal was (and still is) my daily indulgence. It makes the milk taste like a drink I’d once had on Pralltone; creamy and sweet, almost honey blonde to look upon.

“So,” I repeated, dumping the flakes into a bowl.

“How’s your semester going?” she asked.

After my excursion into my memory’s doldrums, I had not expected such a mundane question. It caught me off-guard.

“Oh,” I said, returning the box to its home in the cabinet, placing my hand against Alex’s back to maneuver around her to reach the fridge. Her body was warm beneath her shirt and I was thankful to be opening a device whose sole purpose was to cool things off. “Well enough, I suppose. I’m still getting used to uni—to how this university structures its course work.”

“Were you on quarter terms, or something?” Alex asked. “Trimesters?”

“Oh, uhm… I got my degree… elsewhere,” I lied, and realized I was quite bad at it in the human context.

“When you were oversees?” Alex asked.

“Yes.”

“They let you study at university while you’re in the military?” she pressed.

“Yes, I… I just decided to live over there—”

“Where is ‘there’, for you?”

“What?”

“Where?”

“Where, what?”

“Where is ‘there’?”

“What’s there?”

“We’d give Abbott and Costello a run for their money this morning,” Alex laughed, full, bright, free. She seemed so wonderfully careless in that instant—a complete turnabout of the seriousness I had grown so accustomed to seeing with her—that I could not contain my own playfulness.

“Perhaps you should ask more specific questions.”

“Says the mysterious barista who skirts around them every chance she gets,” Alex quipped over the lip of her mug, taking another sip of her coffee. “Listen,” she said, placing her mug back to the table, returning to a more conscientious tone. “I know people don’t always want to elaborate on stuff that happens when they’re deployed. I have no idea what you could’ve gone through, but… but I’d like to know more about you.”

“Why ever would you want that?” I asked, sinking my large spoon into my cereal.

Alex hitched one shoulder up, and began studying my 80s linoleum counter top with the same attentiveness she did her biomedical engineering texts. “You just seem like a pretty cool person,” she answered. “Nice. A little—don’t take this the wrong way—awkward, maybe, but from what you told me about your thesis proposal last time we spoke, I know you’re probably super smart.”

“Did you know Dr. Makamson—does he do any work in the biology department?”

“Makamson?” Alex repeated. “No, don’t think I know him.”

“That tyrant _rejected_ my proposal!”

“What!” Alex sputtered, hitting the top of the counter with the flat of her hand. Hard. “How? That was one of the best abstracts I’ve ever read! The protein synthesis in combination with the cultivation methodology would, I mean, some of it was extremely ambitious... a little outside of my scope, well, my field anyway, and I could hardly read the _whole_ sixty pages, which, come on, that's a little overkill for a proposal—”

“Apparently I have written science that does not yet exist,” I grumbled, because I was still incensed that an aged tortoise of a man had told me my theories were “implausible nonsense” after I had successfully enacted such cultivation practices on no less than seven planets with similar ages and climate patterns. I might have been off by two or three centuries, give or take, but in the grand scheme of the universe, I was gifting that man with the agricultural miracle of the millennium.

“What do you mean by that?” Alex asked.

I sunk down on the stool next to the bar that jutted out into the kitchen. I used it as my table for one. With Alex perched on the right side, it was a little crowded. Her plate full of pinkish bagel, my bowl full of fading, multi-colored cereal. Her steaming mug of coffee, my lurid, clear cup of orange juice.

“Only that I am too innovative for an aged troglodyte set in his stagnant ways. If he aims to produce any real change—”

“You’re definitely SOL if he’s tenured and assigned as your advisor. He won’t do shit.”

“Sorry—es? Es-oh-ell?”

“Shit outta luck,” Alex explained, propping her hip against my counter, looking, for all the planets in the universe, as if she belonged nowhere else. “For a military gal you sure don’t swear that much.”

“Not in your language,” I said, thinking back to the slew of curses I spat off trying to hook up every water and electric line necessary for the safety board to grant my approval for operation downstairs.

“What languages do you speak, then?”

“Spanish, fluently,” I said, for I had learned it by accident. There were many Spanish-speakers in Arizona and California, and so the translating devices I’d taken from the bowels of Rozz before my escape were able to pick up on it, English, and, bizarrely, a bit of American Sign Language. Hand movements representative of an entire language I had not yet come across—then again, when a species had yet to achieve any sort of mental telepathy, sign language seemed quite practical.

Perhaps humans were not so useless.

“I know some German,” which I discovered would be a good language to know due to European Union’s Central Location. “And Mandarin Chinese.” Again, for business purposes. “Latin, some Greek… wouldn’t you know Latin? You are training to become a physician, correct?”

“Believe it or not, yeah,” Alex answered. “Latin, couple’a years of Russian under my belt as my foreign language credit. Got to do a semester abroad in St. Petersburg in my senior year of undergrad.”

“And how did you find it?”

“Compared to California?” Alex smirked. “Cold. But awesome. I… I didn’t really enjoy it as much as I should have, though.”

“And why is that?”

“I have a problem with living _in the moment_ , I guess. Just… I was worried about a lot of stuff back here. It’s why I went in the first place, to try to stop—to stop feeling like I was…I don’t know… crowding her.”

“Her?”

“My sister,” Alex answered. “My _younger_ sister. It was her senior year in high school and I just needed to back off a little. Stop going home every other weekend to check on her.”

“And you are from…?”

“Midvale?” Alex offers. “It’s so tiny, about four hours north of here on the coast. Nice, though. Just, nothing like the city. We don’t have tons of coffee houses with cute barista ecologists on every corner.”

My spoon clanged against the side of my bowl and my neck was hot once again, that infernal temperature increase I thought I’d taken care of when I’d changed from my bodysuit resurging like steam from a geyser.

“I have met… many different types of people,” I deflected, for I could tell she was complimenting me, and my head felt addled. All of these emotions had been packed into such a brief span of time that morning, I only wonder what would’ve happened if she’d stayed longer, if I’d elaborated on what I told her next. “I… I don’t like to talk about my assignments because… people view me differently.”

“You think I would judge you for what you did when you were a soldier?”

“I judge my actions each day,” I confessed. “It is not a… healthy exercise, but it seems I am not the only one prone to crippling self-analysis.”

“I’ll drink to that,” she mumbled, clapping the rim of her mug against the plastic of my cup of orange juice. We toasted our mutual misfortunes, and it gave me courage.

“I was a sniper,” I said, astonished at Alex’s apparent non-reaction. Her eyes merely widened and her brows rose a bit higher on her head as she swallowed the last dregs of her coffee, tipping the mug back and then bringing the back of her hand up to wipe her lip. I should’ve offered her a napkin. I was likely too afraid that she would run out of the flat, never to see me again.

“That’s… that’s heavy,” she said.

“Yes,” I answered. “That is not all I did, but… oftentimes, it was a standard assignment. I have traveled—I cannot say how far. But you would not believe how similar the stories are, no matter what culture.”

“Evil people amass a following and then too much power, abuse it, hurt people, and then?”

“Then… they would contact me.”

“Well…” she began, then hesitated, her thumb running over the curved handle of the mug. When she looked at me again there wasn’t hatred or judgment, but perhaps a mite of curiosity. “Were you ever ordered to do something you disagreed with?”

“Yes.”

“And… did you go through with it?”

“I—sometimes. In the beginning, when I was first selected for the operations,” I looked toward the ceiling and thought of the petty politics within the military guild, thought of cowtowing to officers who’d garnered ranks by the names of their houses only, not on their abilities or their wisdom acquired from time spent off-world, or even in the remote provinces. “… you must understand, the military is a hierarchy for a reason. There are orders that you follow—” again, an unnecessarily emotional morning, “and then you grow a _conscience_.”

“You defied orders?”

I laughed.

Does inciting riots and planning a forcible coup d’etat for the better of one’s own homeland constitute _defying orders_?

Or is it treason?

“More than you can imagine.”

“So… dishonorable discharge?”

“Prison.”

“What?!”

“Prison,” I repeated, though going into how long and where and what I was sentenced for would hardly do on this morning of emotional revelations for me. “Why it looks like this in here,” I gestured around to the blank space in which I resided and resolved in that instant that the next time Alex came around, it would not look so abysmal. "You say you want to know more of me... perhaps now you understand why I keep so to myself."

I remember thinking how much I wanted her to be my friend, how much I wanted her to return to have these interactions, these small inquiries into each other’s lives. Her jaw hung slightly slack, as if she were gathering her thoughts; I think back now, and wish that we'd had another moment so I'd have heard her initial response. The one she would've given had she not had time to think over my story.

But whatever Alex might have said was cut off once M’gann climbed through the window.

“Astr—Ashley,” she corrected, though I wonder if it was quick enough for Alex to overlook.

“M-Megan,” I stuttered myself. It was uncommon for anyone to sneak up on me, but I had already allowed myself to fall through wooden crates to preserve my secret identity that morning. Having a White Martian come upon me suddenly—and through my _window_ , no less—certainly helped to sell my astonishment.

“How did you—?”

“Fire escape,” I interrupted Alex, hoping there was in fact a fire escape that crawled up the back side of the building. It was only three stories, so I’m not sure if my bluff would’ve worked had this not been Alex’s first time in the flat. I only knew fire escapes existed as an architectural requirement once I started reading up on business and restaurant codes for the city.

“So she doesn’t have to go behind the counter downstairs,” I explained, though there was an auxiliary staircase from the side door that Ryan and his yoga clients used, that the small accounting firm on the third floor likewise utilized. “Alex, this is my friend Megan,” I hurried on, noting the wide, glassy look in M’gann’s eyes. I could tell that she had not expected me to have company, and had taken great pains to hide her distress.

“Hello,” M’gann said, extending a hand in that comfortable way of greeting I’d seen humans do on many occasions (that I, even now, have not quite mastered). “Are you one of the new workers for the shop?”

“No,” Alex said, straightening her posture ever so slightly. “I just, uhm—I’m Alex,” Alex mumbled.

“Alex is a regular. She helps with the shop’s social media accounts.” I turned to her and could not read her features; those that had been so momentarily joyful had closed off once M’gann entered. “Alex is my friend,” I said, and that declaration seemed to ease the tension in her frame.

“You know, if you’d get a phone like the rest of the population you’d be able to do the social media yourself,” M’gann grumbled. “And you’d know if I was trying to get in touch with you.”

“Right,” I said, standing there awkwardly. “Alex, I—I think you should—”

“Yeah, it’s—it’s whatever. I gotta go put some hours in at the lab anyway,” she placed her mug in the sink and grabbed her phone, the white wires from her earbuds wrapped round the body like a thin white snake. “That centrifuge won’t run itself.”

“Yes, that’s… that’s good,” Again, as Alex had indicated: _awkward_. I could not stop myself. Once again, just as I had failed Krypton, I felt wholly inadequate. “Perhaps we can… I will see you again soon? At the shop?”

Alex paused and turned to nod at me, waving with her phone in hand as she shut the door behind her.

“Are you hurt?” I turned to M’gann and touched her arm, wracking my brain as to what species could have left her in such a state. Something that would intimidate a _White Martian_ should not be taken lightly.

“I’m sorry, I—I didn’t know you… or she…” she looked out the door where Alex had left, and placed her hands on her hips. Head turned down, bags beneath her wet eyes, she looked as if she'd been crying for a while.

“What is wrong, M’gann?” I asked, unwilling to allow my mind to return to Alex—Alex, who seemed happier in the moment than I’ve seen her in some time; but M’gann, crying, my friend who first saved me, frightened enough to seek me out in my home. Alex, happy. M'gann, sad.

“She knows,” M’gann whispered. I watched her swallow, listened to her voice hitch, and saw the rippling red effects of her camouflage breaking beneath the weight of her terror. Her dry white skin burbled beneath the skin she’d chosen, the body she knew she was… it was as if this person’s knowledge of M'gann's previous self was hindering all that she could be. “She knows, and she will call them.”

“Who? Who knows what…what…?”

“Veronica.”

“Veronica?”

“Miss Sinclair, _Roulette_ ,” M’gann continued. “She knows I’m a White. I don’t know how, but…” she looked up toward my ceiling and squeezed her eyes shut, her tears pouring from her red eyes. “We have a fight tonight. I told her I wasn’t doing it anymore. I’d paid my debts, made my deal… she won’t let me go. And if I don’t keep winning, she’ll take me.”

“Take you where?”

“I don’t know, Astra. All I’ve seen, is that the losers don’t come back. They’re taken away, and she’s left the richer for it. There are more people at every fight; more elaborate arenas, cages that can hold Pelmurians, Zoberlos, even me, I can’t break out—”

“Have you inspected these substances?” I asked her. “The materials, the composition of the cages? Even after some of those species are incapacitated… listen, I’ve never known a Zoberlo to go peacefully if it were not willing.”

“I cannot say,” M’gann shook her head. “I’ve finally made enough to pay her back all the interest on loan for helping me start the bar, but she won’t let me out. If she releases who— _what_ I am to the world, it will only be a matter of time before they come for me.”

“She must be stopped,” I said. “Your identity is yours to hold and to cherish, and to present who you know yourself to be,” I shushed her and drew her close, pressed my lips to her forehead and vowed to myself that I would free her from this. “If she is truly as powerful as you say, you might have to fight just a while longer, M’gann.”

“I no longer wish to,” she insisted. “I never—not really—I never wanted to do it in the first place. Had it not been for the money—”

“I will see you out of this,” I promised her, wiping at the tears on her cheeks. “If it calls for me to draw on some long buried skills, well… better to open old wounds for a friend than an enemy.”

“Please don’t fight,” M’gann begged me. “She will not turn you loose once you perform for her.”

“I have no intention,” I said, mentally cataloging all I might need for the night’s mission. It was like a dormant beast awakening after centuries; like unused muscles flexed and roused after stagnation; like the clatter of an engine rattling to life after many unused years. “Surveillance only tonight, M’gann. So we fully understand what’s happening to those who lose her fights. So we know where she’s getting these materials. So we… know how to proceed from there.”

I did not want to suggest that eliminating the leader might lead to other eliminations, as so often is the case. An operation of such immensity might be orchestrated by Roulette, but she was not without partners.

“I swear on my life that you will be free of this,” I told her, wrapping her up in my arms.

I did not know then that this would begin the longest struggle since my time in the Phantom Zone. That the battle would not be resolved in the ways I would plan. And that at the end of it all, I would not be the one to help M’gann with her burden. No.

That glory belonged to a green Martian, ageless and kinder than his circumstances should have allowed. It would belong to an organization that I would doubt again and again. And it would belong to the woman who’d been eating breakfast in my apartment that very morning.

 

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> back from my trip and oh dear rao, what have I done???? i swear the coffee shop part is still there, it just might be a front for a secret aliens-protecting-aliens advocacy center oooooooooops?
> 
> Also! Next chapter will feature a VERY SPECIAL GUEST Y'ALL. I seriously hope this works XD


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for some violence and telepathic torture

 

 

* * *

I found it disconcerting to know just how close the latest arena for the exhibitionist alien bouts was to M’gann’s bar. Mind you, the industrial district is expansive, and that’s not including the port that takes up at least three square miles of the city’s westernmost border. But the bar was within a half hour’s walk from this warehouse, and that was unsettling. It was indistinguishable from the rest of the warehouses on the block, industrious, unremarkable, judging from the siding and metallic paneling, the retractable doors and loading docks.

And yet.

It was dark inside when M’gann and I entered. She tilted her head to the right and I could just make out the hulking form of a stationed guard, overly large, likely not all that swift, massive rolls of muscle folded beneath a black shirt and dark pants.

Armed.

A revolver on the left hip, with bulks of sundry weapons stashed into deep pockets.

Guarding… guarding what, exactly?

I used my x-ray vision in the dark as M’gann steered me clear of the guard’s path, shifting to her green form.

“Miss Martian,” he snarked.

M’gann bared her teeth and I ducked my head to avoid his gaze. I kept close to M’gann as she navigated the rest of the facility.

After I’d passed through one corridor so that the guard couldn’t make eye contact, I turned back to study exactly what was in the other room. I could scarcely believe that the hulking security figure was guarding a _kitchen_ , of all places. With all the efficiency of a ship’s galley, servers shuffled from counter to sink, disposing of trays and picking up ones with freshly plated selections for someone—or thing?—to munch on later. I made a mental note, and delved deeper with M’gann.

First to the ring.

The main quarters of the warehouse were guarded by three figures on a rotating patrol. The light shone bright over the gilded cage, and tapered off where I supposed the spectators would stand. I saw alien fighters warming up beyond looped ropes that separated them; I knew that mere fiber could not keep their aggressions at bay, but this ritual seemed rehearsed enough that the fighters—all sorts—knew their places. Guards patrolled with formidable batons that buzzed the rainbowed spectrum; colors shifted as they passed different species, and I wondered how the devices worked. I wondered if the chemicals could incapacitate depending on the species—that was the only answer I could think of as to why physically superior aliens might obey human guards. How was Roulette getting the devices in the first place, and why, exactly, did the colors change?

Gold for Trobystis.

Pink for Brillmians.

Purple for Daxamites.

Darkest, midnight blue, for Gnalians.

I stared through the next wall and saw a crowd. There was fabric hung in heavy, draping folds over the walls; lights strung up in wavey loops and tall tables against which the people leaned, meandering, drinking, eating, pulling out pocketbooks to throw cash onto the table. They recorded their bets with the gentleman I’d determined was the bookie merely from the frantic scratching of his pen and the lighting-fast movements of his finger against his phone screen.

Yet this was not some raucous event; light music played from the other room. Women wore dresses that sparkled as they turned, and pranced around in those infernal _high heels_ I’ve seen on some of the college girls when they stop by the shop before a night out. Men were in suits, ties, vests, jackets, their hair combed back and their hands filled with ice-cold glasses.

But if there was food, and a chef in the kitchen, if there were drinks, and there were people putting money on the tables… that meant there was a wait staff.

Rao, I hadn’t done such simple recon in _decades_. I took note of the masks, over-elaborate and trite, in all honesty; if this was anything like the illegal gambling rings on the hundreds of other planets in the universe, everyone in that room already knew everyone else. It afforded the illusion of discretion, nothing more, and made all the humans resemble that strange furry creature that scrounged around outside of the shop early in the mornings, upending my trash cans.

(I later discovered that creature was a raccoon. I named him Fredrick.)

“Astra,” M’gann led me to an open space in the corner of the warehouse right next to the wall. There was a chair that would fit a humanoid and nothing larger; the different sections for the fighters were demarcated by red velvet ropes, and behind each rope stood the beings that the humans would bet on as their prize fighters. M’gann had indicated that the humans were allowed to walk past them and they were to preen, to flex, to show them their most prominent physical attributes in order to attract more bets; there was apparently some reward for the fighter who had the most money placed on his or her performance, even if he or she was not the winner of their bout.

It was exploitative and humiliating, forcing those aliens to degrade themselves for money.

I wanted to pummel the cage until it was little more than a mass of wire.

“They still have time at their cocktail hour,” M’gann whispered once again to me. She dare not speak louder, even with all of the grunting and the lilt of music rippling through the wall from the front annex. No doubt there were species here that might eavesdrop on our conversation with their overly sensitive ears.

“And you need to blend in,” M’gann said. “The only reason we’re allowed guests is if we’re recruiting them to fight. I shall not bear that burden with you.”

“I understand,” I told her quickly, but could not stop from squeezing her hand before I left her. “I will make no moves against this establishment, lest I see you hurt.”

“Astra, defeating Roulette and discovering her connections are far more important than my safety. Make no moves unless you know you can _end_ it.”

I disagreed but dared not linger; it took a fraction of a second with my superspeed and knowledge of the area to scrounge up a white serving shirt and a strip of black fabric that I could tie about my head. I rolled my white lock beneath the brown so that it was less prominent. In a room full of aliens, I could not trust that I had not fought, defeated, or killed anyone important to those fighting (I was an elite general and had visited over 75 planets and four galaxies—in the proper circles, there was a sense of celebrity about me); and in a room full of humans, I could not afford to give them any exotic physical trait to identify me with should I make my return to dismantle this entire operation.

“Hello,” I said to one of the large serving boys as he exited the kitchen. “I am here.”

“You new?” the man said, quickly flicking his attention toward me as he plated a load of small crackers and something I really hoped was fish.

“Yes, I am supposed to help with the appetizers.”

“Hors d’oeuvres, this isn’t a Chilis,” he gruffed.

“What is this?”

“Salmon and Cucumber Tartare with Wasabi Sauce and Pita triangles.”

How all of that could get onto one bite-size equilateral biscuit, I was unsure. I wanted to make sure I had it right, but didn’t have much time to get on the floor before someone noticed that I should not be there. Poor dumb human. He had the same frantic eyes that Han got when the rush picked up. I almost hated to do what I was about to do.

“What is that?” I said, pointing to the side.

“What’s wha—?”

He did not finish his question because I knocked the bulk of my fist into the base of his skull, rendering him unconscious instantly. He crumpled, all six foot plus of his frame. It only took me five seconds to shove his body underneath the white table cloth placed overtop the preparation area before me, and then, I was on the floor.

I fell into the role as if I were just out of the Guild’s Academy once again. It all came back to me, the tense high of information gathering, the exhilarating rush of collecting intelligence in enemy territory. I was discreet and masked and did very little talking. Nine times out of ten those plucking the food from my tray did not even ask what I was serving. Fortunate for me, which meant I could avoid serving altogether, and instead listen to those in attendance.

From the snippets of conversation I overheard, the gathering was comprised of the usual players: crooked politicians and heads of private corporations, financiers and a handful of actors—I did not understand the human hang-up with performed drama and affording those actors such celebrated status. On Krypton, it was the artists and their touring showcases that would attract admirers by the hundreds of thousands—all the more surprising that Alura opted for the Ethical Track during her latter years of Instruction, instead of the Arts.

Alura plagued me as I took note of the number of exits, how many of the guests were armed, whether they were wearing anything that might denote some connection to Miss Sinclair. I did not think she would be hard to miss, from M’gann’s descriptions: a writhing serpent tattooed up one’s body was hardly subtle. I found her eventually, passing from guest to guest, sipping—but not sipping at all, I noticed—from a flute of clear, bubbly liquid. Likely sober and wheedling her patrons out of their money as they sank deeper into their own cups. I turned my back to her but kept and ear out, smiling quietly as a trio comprised of an analyst, and engineer, and a model took their share of the samples I brought round.

“—and the mask thing. For all of your panache, Veronica, you must know how tacky this seems. You have your fighters wearing something more akin to Hannibal’s muzzle and we’re left to CostCo fabrics and bedazzled sequins. No wonder Violet got out when she did.”

“Violet left too early to see any return on her investment,” Roulette chirped.

I heard her swallow this time. I wondered what person might push Miss Sinclair to drink when she’d refrained from indulging throughout the evening.

“Vlad knew she would never truly buy into all of this,” Roulette continued. “Too soft-hearted. Hopefully, being in this family will not crush her delicate petals.”

“She left an abusive father to his illegal gambling ring, and you felt compelled to take her place?”

“Oh, I can handle my uncle. He’ll be infirm within the next few years anyway, and then—”

“Then you take over the family business.”

“Careful,” Roulette snapped. It was such a distinct shift from her tone throughout the evening that I made it a point to double back once I had reached the edge of the room. “This is not an interview,” she hissed.

“I watched you grow up, Veronica, it’s only natural that you feel comfortable sharing with me.”

“You watched _Violet_ grow up,” Roulette corrected her. “You saw me at my uncle’s and Aunt Vivian’s holiday parties on the off chance I made it home from boarding school. Do not think that your presence here is anything more than a favor to my aunt.”

“And the congressman, and Wilson Laurent, and Dr. Raja—”

“You put any of those names in print, and I’ll have your head.”

“Vivian might have something to say about that—remember, the one with a 60% share in the Sinclair Trust? And not just her… probably the police. And the first amendment.”

“Don’t test me. My uncle still has your history with Lane at the _Planet_ all wrapped up and ready to release the second you step out of line.”

“Funny thing about histories,” the woman responded. “If you work hard enough, you eventually outgrow your past. Come now, Veronica, you know Lois has only had eyes for that cleft-chinned extraterrestrial for decades now.”

Lois.

Lois…Lane.

_Lois Lane._

Why did that name sound so familiar to me?

“Honestly, a sex scandal at my age would be a bit of a blessing. TMZ can finally stop taking bets on which country I’m adopting an orphan from.”

Roulette’s agitation was evident from all the way across the room. That is, I do have exceptional sight and hearing, which means that perhaps it wasn’t quite as evident as I supposed; but nevertheless, Roulette was rattled. She gripped her drink so tightly I feared the glass would shatter, and she loomed over the tiny blonde woman she’d been locked in conversation with in hopes of looking imposing. But the woman merely hitched her chin up and plopped one loose hand atop her waist, and downed the remainder of her drink. She was an entire head shorter than Roulette, but she was undoubtedly the victor of the battle between the two.

“Enjoy your evening, Cat,” Roulette seethed. “It will be the last of my events that you attend.”

All eyes were on Roulette as she ascended a platform at the far right side of the room. Under the glow of the lights (suddenly less romantic and more clinical), I could see the event for what it was: slap-dash, garish— _tacky_ , as Cat indicated.

She seemed to be the only one with a real sense of the room, with any understanding of what was going on behind closed doors to make this project work. She had dropped more specific names in two minutes with Roulette than I had heard from any of the other attendees all night. So while all attention was turned to the mistress of ceremonies and her scarlet dress and snake tattoo, I sailed off to find the tiny blonde woman in a blue dress named for a feline.

Humans are so strange.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“You are snooping,” I whispered in her ear, startling her so much that she dropped the lid of whatever vessel she was looking into.

The metal top _clanged_ against one of several vats large enough to cook up a human. The small room where I found Cat lurking was located at the back of the warehouse, two storage rooms down from the space Roulette had fashioned into a kitchen, and all the way down the hall from the annex she’d used for her cocktail and betting hour. Metal pipes with rickety nuts and bolts were screwed together like the workings of those dangerous carnival rides Jeremiah and Connie got such a kick out of, and the needles in the gauges on the boilers were pushing close to 400 degrees Kelvin.

Whatever was in those vats was boiling and glowing and smelled of Croyzialite feces. The fumes were rancid.

“And you are snooping _poorly_ ,” I coughed, speeding back to the vat she’d just opened and sealing it without the rubber-insulated gloves Cat had donned for her investigation. There were rubbery industrial-styled gloves and aprons and goggles and boots, all laid out by each of the vats, and then those batons—the ones that glowed different colors I’d seen the guards carrying--resting off to the side atop some small collapsible table.

“I’m… not snooping!” Cat argued, wrestling herself out of the gloves and shifting closer toward the wall. I jumped across the room and took up my position blocking the door. It seemed as if she would try to outpace me in those damnable _heels_ —what is it with human women and those blasted shoes?

“Not well, by any means,” I replied.

“I’m looking for the lady’s,” Cat said.

“The lady’s what?”

“...powder room.”

“It is most likely not located within the suspicious vats of chemicals,” I answered her.

“Then, since you seem to be working here, could you kindly escort me to—”

“Who is Wilson Laurent?” I asked her.

She perked up at that, her brows scrunching together as her gaze swept my form from toe to head. She shook out her curls and placed her hands on her hips, huffing irritably.

“You must have me mistaken for someone who knows what’s going on around here.”

“But you do,” I insisted. “There is a senator here. I heard you speaking of Dr. Raja; I need names, addresses, is he a key player in all of this? How do the fights tie into the Sinclair Trust?”

“Now you must have me mistaken for an omniscient, though many have made that mistake in the past,” she sighed. “You ask too many questions for someone passing out canapés.”

“It was Salmon Tartare.”

She stared at me for a beat, then tromped right over to me and stuck her finger in my face.

“If you are one of Veronica’s minions come to find out just how much I know, go ahead and tell her I can ruin her. But know that if anything happens to me, you will be facing the suit of the century. This is not the first time someone’s threatened me—or even tried to kill me! I have more power in this finger than you have in your entire body, so stand down _wait staff_!”

She let her declaration loose with all the authority of someone who was accustomed to being listened to quite regularly, but she was just so _tiny_. Her cheeks were flushed and her hair frizzed at the edges from her exploration of the vat, and I could tell her heart was racing in the moment; such bravado intermingled with genuine _bravery_ , prepared to stand down one of Miss Sinclair’s guards with nothing more than a threat, an index finger, and her eloquent ire.

I was so flabbergasted by the threat I couldn’t stop myself.

I laughed.

Hard.

And I kept laughing, which seemed to be the wrong thing to do… but it felt so wonderful!

Amidst all the secrecy of this place, all of the threats and the danger and the leverage bandied about between humans and aliens alike, this tiny feline woman in impractical footwear and inhibiting clothing thought she _frightened_ me. It was so amusing I could not stop chuckling, no matter how perturbed she looked. Especially with that silly mask on; there was little doubt that she was what the humans called—what was the word?— _feisty_.

“I apologize,” I said, placing a hand to my lips. “I have not laughed so heartily in a very long time.”

“Who the hell do you think you—!?”

“Quiet,” I told her, for Roulette had begun the first match. I concentrated, blocking out shouts and whispers and vibrations and everything in between, until I could focus on Roulette’s voice.

_It seems most unfortunate that Cat Grant will have an accident on her way home this evening._

I heard the weight of bodies rushing to actualize such a misfortune. There was a guttural, hasty, _yes mam_ , and then the flood of sound returned (a ringing bell, cheers from the crowd, the centering breaths of two aliens preparing to launch themselves at each other in the ring), so I had to pull back. I shook my head and stepped away from the door, nearly running over the small woman behind me.

“Is there someone outside?”

“Is your surname Grant? _Cat_ Grant?”

“Yes,” her voice lilted higher, and her hazel eyes flickered toward the ceiling. “It is I! What? Do you want an autograph or a selfie?”

“How did you arrive here this evening?”

Again, with that critical stare. She cocked an eyebrow as she slowly answered me:

“Private car.”

She was not quick to provide any other information; probably because I had rocketed across the room with the mysterious bubbling vats and looked straight through the drywall in an attempt to judge whether it was load-bearing or not. It would not do to have a humanoid-shaped hole in the warehouse. It would stir too many questions; there were only so many humanoid aliens strong enough to _break down a wall._ But Cat Grant either needed out, or we needed to hide.

“You should call your driver and tell him not to return.”

“And how do you suggest I get home, then?”

“I will take you, but— _belktl_ , they are coming for you.”

“What?” Cat Grant asked, pivoting expertly in her heels. “Veronica’s pawns?”

“If you did not leave a car in the back lot with the others, they will know. And then, they will fashion your death to look like an ‘accident’. I heard her make the order.”

“Oh, you _heard_ her, did you?" she asked sarcastically. "And why should I trust you?”

“I am not one of hers,” I insisted, ripping the mask from my face. “I want this place destroyed.”

“Get in line,” she quipped. “But if what you say is true, then I need to leave before—”

“They’re within twenty-five yards of this room, rounding the right corridor. They’ve already checked the back hall, but they have not checked the arena yet. You should lose yourself there.”

“I will not take part in some barbaric betting game just to bury old secrets.”

“They cannot find you here,” I insisted, crossing once more to the back wall of the facility. The small windows near the ceiling would not allow for an escape. I only had one option, and that was to save the source of the intel.

Save _Cat Grant._

“Keep ordering me around, and I’ll make sure you go down with me,” Cat snapped, then stumbled, her eyes bugging because I had approached her with my superspeed, and put my hands on her waist. “Just _what_ are you doing?!”

“Cat Grant, you need to be quiet now. I am saving us from being discovered.”

With that, I lifted us both off the ground and managed to muffle Cat’s squeak by placing my hand over her mouth. I maneuvered in the air so that I lay flat upon my back, as if on my fold-out couch, and she was lying atop me. Just in case the guards glanced up and began shooting, better my bullet-proof back than her squishy human torso. She looked down with wide, terrified eyes, as two guards burst into the room, performed a cursory scan of the place, and then grunted at each other before exiting.

“Shh,” I hushed her, for she was shaking in my arms.

I waited until the echoes of the boots faded and the guards were searching at lease two rooms down. I needed to be certain that they would not return. Finally, I gently floated us back to the ground, and settled an anxious Cat Grant atop her pretty red-soled shoes.

She seemed more than okay with the price on her head, so I did not understand her reticence with the flying. Didn't human felines standardly land on their feet?

“You—you’re a—” she was taking extremely deep breaths through her nose, pinching the bridge of it, trying to calm herself. As much as she needed comfort, I couldn’t provide it.

We needed to _move_.

“Alien, yes,” I finished for her, squinting to make sure the guards had rounded the corner. We could make it through to the arena if I sped us through the kitchen, but that would mean exposing another one of my powers to Cat Grant. I listened and listened and heard the first match winding down, the cheers going up as the victor was pronounced, the loser lying dead or unconscious in the arena. Through it all I could hear the whisperings, the mutterings of M’gann—the Martian creed for Valor mumbled under her breath.

She was next.

“What are—who are you?”

“I’m a…” Well, I did not quite know the answer myself. “My name is Astra,” I told her, and oh, did it feel good to speak the truth after lying for so long.

“You can fly, you… your hearing,” Cat Grant was mumbling to herself as well, her pupils widening and shrinking as if undergoing some physical manifestation of an inner epiphany. I could practically _see_ the gears turning in her head. “What else can you do?”

“No, not… not now,” I could hear M’gann being escorted into the ring and the hooting cheers that went up as she approached. “Perhaps another time, but… for now, I meant what I said.”

I approached her slowly with my hands folded before me. This was no time to assume the air of a general. I needed her _calm_ if I was about to swoop her up and rush her into another sector of the warehouse. “I have a friend who is locked into a fighting contract with Roulette. She will not let her leave. There is leverage against her, blackmail… this entire affair is despicable, and I will see it dismantled. You called this ‘barbaric’, so it leads me to believe you are not of the same mind as Roulette.”

“It could be humans or aliens,” Cat Grant declared, flexing and curling her still-jittery fingers. “The Sinclairs were never ones to turn down a quick dollar. Though with aliens, I suppose the legislation has not quite caught up with the real-world. It’s perfectly legal to exploit your kind. You’d get more jail time orchestrating a cock fight.”

“A cock fi—you mean to say there will be no judgment from your courts?” I asked.

“Most likely not. I had hoped to ruin them in the realm of public opinion,” Cat answered.

“Public opinion is worthless in the eyes of justice,” I snipped.

“Oh, I must adamantly disagree, Astra,” she purred, and there, oh, with that mischievous glint in her eye, I saw the power she claimed she held in her fragile human fingers. I saw _Cat Grant._

“We must get you onto the main warehouse floor. Once I can be certain my friend will not be harmed, I will assure you safe passage home.”

“That won’t be necessary. Just get me out of the warehouse district and I’ll call a cab.”

“I would rather not risk your knowledge of this operation by entrusting you to the city’s public transportation.”

“Which is usually why I call a private service, but now that I’m compromised… well,” she huffed, shimmying her shoulders in some show of preparation. “Let’s get on with this. I suppose we’ll be furtively tip-toeing around corners and avoiding goons like some cartoons in a Scooby Doo episode?”

“I do no know what that means,” I told her, grabbing her by the hand so that she was within reaching distance.

“You’re very touchy, did you know that?” she asked me.

“I carefully handle all important cargo.”

“I can safely say no one’s ever used that word to describe me before.”

“Do not meow once I pick you up again.”

“Did you just tell me not to— _shit_!”

She was so light it felt as if I were carrying a feather. Propped up in my arms, I dashed around food-laden tables and avoided banging her head against the industrial sized refrigerator, which I considered a successful transport. We were safely ensconced by the crowd as the master of ceremonies began reading off the first alien’s showy name, followed by M’gann’s credentials as _Miss Martian_.

“Put me down,” Cat Grant slurred and swayed against me. I kept my hand carefully on her waist to make sure she would not topple over. Her equilibrium seemed to be compromised.

“Are you quite well?”

“I’ll let you know once the room stops spinning,” she muttered.

I kept one hand on her just in case she felt the need to pitch forward and empty her stomach of its contents. It would be somewhat less dignified than how I assume the woman would usually act, but when in battle, one must do what one has to in order to ensure proper performance. The physical tribulations I overcame in the jungles of Thorngil were not the same as those I face in the deserts of Streld, or in the mountains of Yygdern IV, or in the aquatic vessel commissioned by the science guild on the water-world of Venicias.

Poor Kitty Cat. Death threats and regurgitation did not seem like the best night for a human, no matter how normal it might have seemed to me once upon a time.

As M’gann took her paces in the ring (to the thunderous applause of all in attendance), I observed her competitor. He looked like an aged Silurian, but instead of green, scaly skin it was navy blue, with a rippling black ridge running over the center of his…hers… _its_ skull. It was dressed in a black tunic and merely stood in place with its hands classed near the waist, watching M’gann as she paced back and forth.

“And now, for our second—and, judging from the betting—most highly anticipated bout of the evening, we have… MISS MARTIAN VERSUS THE BLUE BRYAKIAN!!!”

M’gann snarled and flung herself toward the Bryakian, who did not attempt to move as she charged. Instead it took her blows, one after the other, hardly putting up any defensive blocks with forearms or thighs or even twists to the sides. It was evident that the Bryakian was _letting_ her beat it, and that made me more nervous than if it had started to beat M’gann into submission. Bryak was the ancient name of the Coluan planet, but this being did not have the red-dotted symbol of the Brainiacs. Its skin was too dark, eyes too dull, and the shell-like ridge atop its skull too thin to be a descendant of the Coluans. Judging by its lack of swagger as it entered the ring, I wondered if it had given up any information to Roulette prior to the fight… but then, if it had not cooperated by giving her a name, or even a species… how was it that Roulette was compelling it to fight in the first place?

Suddenly, the metallic clang of body against cage stopped as M’gann held the Bryakian aloft by the tunic. Its tail snaked forward as M’gann stood, transfixed, body still and heavy as marble. The tail was long and grooved near the end, serpentine, with a small fork-like protrusion and two prehensile tongs that walked their way up M’gann’s arm.

She slowly released the Bryakian as her fingers loosed, the body sliding down the bars of the battling cage.

That tail, however, kept constant contact with M’gann’s arms, slithering over her skin and up, the two digits splitting, curving, to press lightly at her temples.

The crowd had begun grumbling their disapproval; they paid for bloodshed, and this was not it. Yet M’gann, the most entertaining fighter, supposedly, had been halted so effortlessly with the touch of that tail.

There was more to the species than I would ever know.

I would discover it, though, and the pain it could inflict, despite the chilling terror that happened next.

M’gann started _crying_.

Silently, staring ahead, paralyzed and crying, barely breathing, tears pooling and falling and cascading and drowning her, she just stood there with that tail pressed against her temples. She shed tears that seemed endless, and I thought I wanted it to stop. I did, I ached for it, to charge in and stop the silent torture, until the Bryakian removed its tail from her head, and M’gann began screaming.

Wailing and sobbing, the Bryakian circled as M’gann collapsed, howling in Martian, curses and pleas and desperate entreaties to her superior to spare the children, _only spare the children, Armek_. It hurt me so deeply, I felt wounded on her behalf. I felt the heat flow behind my eyes and was prepared to intervene, to stop the senseless agony I saw playing out before me. The Bryakian did not smile, nor did it frown, merely circled as M’gann began convulsing, clutching her head, her bones held so straight and muscles flexed so tightly I wonder why she did not snap her spine.

“Don’t.”

A hand on my arm, Cat Grant’s voice in my ear.

“Whatever’s happening isn’t physical,” she whispered, and even through the almost sympathetic pain I was sharing with M’gann, I could hear her. I understood what she was trying to say. “You can’t do anything now to help her without compromising yourself.”

And so I stood and watched while my friend was tortured.

By the end of it, once I’d finally managed to get myself back to the apartment several hours later, I was the one vomiting.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The Bryakian was declared winner by default—not because he’d landed any killing or incapacitating blow, but because the torture he inflicted was never-ending. M’gann was pulled out of the cage and thrown back behind the set of red ropes where she’d first taken her seat prior to the fighting. Spectators walked by to marvel at her weak green form, to grumble at themselves for placing such high bets on her when she’d only ever won before. But her opponent was a new beast, apparently nothing the guests had ever seen before. The Bryakian was ushered out and M’gann not taken anywhere, so I assumed whatever rules had applied to other losers had not applied to her. Judging from the sheer number of visitors that gawked at her injuries, I would guess that she’d been the most betted-upon alien of the evening.

I suppose that saved her.

That time, at least.

It took no time at all for the third and final fight of the evening to begin, and, with everyone’s attentions turned toward the flying spikes and fiery breath being spewed from the aliens in the cage, I was able to smuggle Cat and an unconscious M’gann out of the facility.

It was an awkward transport: I held M’gann’s unconscious form in my arms while Cat held tight to my back. Her arms gripped my neck so tightly I would’ve undoubtedly choked had I been human. She directed me to one of the tallest towers in the city, and I touched down on her balcony. She scrabbled off of my back and yanked her shoes off, sailed into the office of monitors and cream colors and headed straight to the bar.

I could not stay long, for I had M’gann to attend to.

“I am sorry that you have made an enemy of Roulette,” I told Cat, shifting M’gann so that her head was cradled near my shoulder. “But I must see to my friend.”

“Listen, alien ladies, I've got plenty of enemies. I don't mind adding another to the list,” Cat returned, sipping from her crystal, barefoot and agitated atop a plushy white rug. All of my clothing was so discolored from coffee stains, I shuddered to even set foot in the space. "It's not something I imagine either of you are familiar with, but I assure you, I can take care of myself."

“You now nothing of what we are,” I cautioned her. “I have enemies, and I have allies. I hope to count you in the latter.”

“If it means Vivian’s niece won’t be able to subject anyone to—” she hesitated, motioning shakily toward M’gann, before continuing, “— _that_ again, then yes. Count me your ally.”

“You know more of her connections than I,” I said. “We will need to speak after I tend to M’gann.” I stepped backwards and out onto balcony, making sure I would clear the overhang in my haste to take M’gann back to my flat. It was late in the night, and I would have to call Jeremiah in on his morning off, then explain that he needed to come in because I was staying in my apartment. 

Tending to a Martian.

I would leave off the last bit, but he would not be thrilled to pull a shift early on a Sunday, all the same.

“Nineteen-thirty, Prentiss Boulevard,” I muttered. “Brigadier’s Brewers. Ask for Ashley.”

She was grumbling something about being _ordered about like some paperboy,_ but I was not as concerned with Cat as I was with M’gann. She had cursed her husband’s name in the ring and had mourned the loss of Green children, as if she’d been transported to that distinct memory, as if she were sinking into it once more. I returned to my flat and laid her on the couch, covered her with something soft and wiped her brow with a cool towel. I felt so helpless, but at least I was there.

I sat by her bedside that night and hoped Cat Grant would find me, hoped M’gann would wake, and hoped that I had not underestimated just how violent this battle might become.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know! Alex-light in a General Danvers story... but then plot took over and Cat wanted her chapter to SHINE!!! But fret not, Alex will return next chapter, we'll get to hear the fall-out from M'gann's fight, and Cat Grant will react to being summoned like a mailroom worker.
> 
> Oh, this is so delicious, y'all.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've always Head Cannoned that Astra is bisexual. And in all the AUs and stories I've written, there are elements of her backstory that I feel crop up no matter which universe I'm working on. Streld and her trauma on that planet is a recurring theme that she references a lot in her history. Then, there is her first (and only) real love with a Kryptonian Military Captain, who I've always seen in my head as John Cho a la Henry in Selfie. He gets a mention here, and I kinda like having actors faces to put with OCs. 
> 
> Thanks for reading, this one got long!

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

I forced M’gann to stay with me for the next two days. She protested, arguing that Thursday and Friday nights were big for business at the bar, but she was in no condition to bar tend for an entire shift, especially on the third weekend of the pool tournament organized by the Kwilarians. I’d heard nothing from the feline woman in two days, but I had begun some research into the Bryakian species who’d inflicted such terrible trauma. It took me flying back to Fort Rozz and combing through the prison records—and what I found did not bode well for any of Roulette’s contracted fighters.

The Bryaki were a strain of Coluan descendants twisted outside-in.

The Brainiacs, being as ancient and advanced as they are (were?), left traces of their influence throughout multiple galaxies. Seven hundred Kryptonian cycles prior to my birth, Coluan researchers touched down on Brykos, an uninhabited planet that Kryptonians only took note of for its dense atmosphere. After Coluan colonizers were exposed to the mysterious haze within the first few layers of the planet’s mesosphere, they lost contact with their research fleet and the expedition was recalled.

Yet two hundred cycles later, signals from beneath the dense atmospheric layer on Brykos were picked up by a passing recreational ship, on scenic tour within the Brykos solar system. Each planet’s marvelous textures and colors were legendary, due in large part to such peculiar atmospheres. The recreational ship made sent out several signals, and discovered that the Coluan colonizers had not only survived the lost contact from the researchers all that time ago, but a civilization had grown and thrived. Soon enough, the Bryaki emerged as a major presence in the system, and then, the galaxy, not for their technological developments, but for their _telepathy._

“It was as if I never left the destruction on Mars,” M’gann confided in me the morning after her fight. She had slept fitfully on top of my terribly uncomfortable couch; for the second time in three days I vowed to make the space more comfortable, if only because I found myself hosting _friends_.

It was a strange revelation after seven years on Earth.

“As if time and torture had condensed to a mere moment within me, and that moment was all I knew. Green children, screaming…”

“And your own telepathy, M’gann?” I asked her, placing a hot mug of tea into her jittery hands. “Your mental shields—I know little of the Martian languages, but your means of communicating are legend.”

“I was not expecting that type of assault,” M’gann told me. “Although, if I had been prepared for it… even then, I am not certain I could have defeated him. His mind is his weapon, and his abilities to manipulate the thoughts of another…in my three hundred years on this Earth I have faced no greater adversary.”

“The betting saved you,” I said. “You were the prize fighter of the night, and were not escorted away due to your worth. If we look at this practically, yours was not even the most spectacular of the bouts.”

“Only the most humiliating.”

“The Bryakian may be strong, but he does not make for a good show. After speaking with Cat, I believe Roulette is far more concerned with having an entertaining fighter than an unstoppable one.”

“And how is your human pet?” M’gann asked me, bringing her feet underneath her as she settled on the couch. “You collect them like your coffee mugs, Astra, as if you are some human magnet.”

“I do not _collect_ humans,” I argued, crawling on the couch opposite her and setting my own mug on the meager coffee table before us. She nudged my leg with her foot and grinned. I would have swatted it away, had she not recently been put through severe psychological torture.

“Oh, you must know your staff adore you,” M’gann said. “Especially after you helped that male—Han was it?—with his figures.”

“Humanity’s mathematics are difficult even for _me_ , because it is so primitive. You have lived here for 300 years, so perhaps I should refer him to you.”

“And your professors sing your praises.”

“Do you doubt than I am charismatic when I need be? I did tend your bar, before I struck out with this endeavor.” I motioned off toward my front door and downstairs where Connie and Leah were both working on their post-lunch duties. There tended to be a major lull on Friday afternoons that would occasionally pick up when I clocked in around 4 p.m. Most customers during that time were students who were preparing for an evening out.

“It has everything to do with your charisma, Astra,” M’gann continued. “You took control of an entire prison. You’ve led armies. Is it so unbelievable that the humans might think of you fondly?”

“I do not mind if they think of me fondly. They think of stars and trees and the tiny mouse that outruns the cat, _fondly_. But it does me no good if they do not work with me. I feel we will need human allies if we are to combat one as well-off as Roulette,” I insisted. “From what little I have discovered, she is connected and irreproachable.”

“She is a threat to all alien life here,” M’gann insisted. “She has no qualms about torturing us for profit. She does not uphold her deals, and would stab us all if it meant she could harvest our organs and auction them off to the highest bidder.”

“It is even more complex than that,” I said. “This organization is older than she is. She has inherited it, I believe. The Sinclair Trust? Have you ever heard of such a thing?”

“No,” M’gann said. “I have lived on this planet for many years, but never have I been so invested in their financial dealings. That is evident, for if I had been, I would not have taken out a loan with her in the first place.”

“I believe Catherine Grant will be a great ally to us,” I insisted. “She has all the muscle mass of a twig, but she knew every face in that room, despite the masks. She knew names of Roulette’s relatives… and will be able to map out the connections that are less evident to you and me.”

“Then you will apply some… pressure, General?”

“I need leverage first,” I insisted. “Catherine Grant will help me find it.”

“Have you heard from her since the fight?”

“She is tucked safely away in her tower,” I said. “I have done my research… she owns CatCo Worldwide Media. Are you familiar with it?”

“I know of several properties… _The Tribune_ is the only one I care to glance over. She is pro-alien, believe it or not.”

“Really? Even after coming to that bout?”

“At least the stories that run in _The Tribune_ slant pro-alien. She has had history with Superman, in Metropolis.”

“It seems everyone within the higher circles knows something of Kal-El. Though her history is not with him, but with his mate. Do you know of Lois Lane?”

“No,” M’gann answered. “I do not know the name.”

“She is not necessarily connected to all this, but I recalled her from my first meeting on this planet with Kal-El.”

“Astra, that was years ago.”

“I know,” I answered. “I just find it odd that she was mentioned again.”

“Do you think Lois Lane’s involvement will have an affect on whether or not Cat Grant helps us?”

“I am unsure,” I said. “All I know is that it has been two days since the battle, and she has not yet reached out to me.”

“You don’t make yourself easy to contact, Astra.”

“She flew on my back as I carried your limp form in my arms,” I protested. “It is not something I imagine a human might forget any time soon, no matter how well-connected.” I stood from my spot near the counter, abandoning my tea. “She will find me when she wants to, I suspect. If not, I will go to her.”

“When?”

“Not today, unfortunately,” I said. “My shift starts in two hours. Will you be alright by yourself?”

“You’ve taken it upon yourself to keep several books on hand, which I thank you for,” M’gann answered. “Though I am still tired from whatever the Bryakian inflicted upon me… I will rest and read, and will ‘take it easy’, as you have ordered.”

“Good,” I told her, taking her hand in my own. “When you have recovered, I… perhaps you will train with me? If we are to dismantle Roulette’s scheme, I will have to fight again. It has been so long, and I can think of no one else who might match my strength.”

“I do not have your skill,” M’gann said. “Our styles are very different.”

“As are human styles,” I countered. “And their weaponry. I have had to adapt my training to countless different species, M’gann. But I do need to resume training. I cannot afford to be taken by surprise.”

“As your little human surprised you,” M’gann teased me. “I am thankful Kryptonian minds are impervious to Martian telepathy. I imagine you think much of your little _Alexandra_.”

My cheeks felt hot as a result of M'gann's jibe. I kept reminding myself that she was injured, and it would be in poor taste to launch myself at her and demand an apology. That, and it was childish. That did not stop me from arguing petulantly:

“Hold your tongue, I do not!” I insisted.

“Your blush proves otherwise, General.”

“You see, I have lost all composure under interrogating techniques,” I redirected, reaching for my mug so that I might have something to do with my hands other than strangle my friend. “This is why I need you to train with me.”

“Very well,” M’gaan said, rising to pull a book from the shelf where I had begun collecting a sorry number of titles for a personal library. Some of them were my ecology texts, which I did not imagine M'gann would find interesting. In three hundred years of walking this planet, she has probably read more books than I have ever seen.

“Next week, then, once I have fully recovered," she said.

“I look forward to it,” I said, standing to retrieve my clothing for my shift. “I am glad you are feeling better, M’gann. I was… you must know you are my dearest friend here.”

“I do, Astra. You know more of me than many others, and I am happy to have you as a confidante.”

“And as a comrade in battle?”

“I can think of no better strategist,” she returned with a smile, settling back onto the couch.

I went to the bathroom and changed, then to the kitchen to eat something small (two bags of the corn chips with the container of salsa) before my shift.

I looked forward to defeating Roulette. It would not be easy; though, I do not think I wanted it to be. She was an unanticipated challenge, and I could feel dormant gears cranking to life as my brain began working. It was as if she had fanned the flames of battle burned to ash within me.

Roulette, however, was not the only human who had sparked such fire.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

At 10 p.m. on a Friday, I had little to worry about. The shop was closed, M’gann was resting above me, and songs played over the Bluetooth speaker as I finished cleaning. I finally found my own preferences with human music, so I could deviate from the college’s radio station to songs that were smoother—I am quite fond of a human instrument called the piano—similar enough to a Kryptonian organ I once studied during my earlier years in Instruction; I also very much like wind and brass instruments. So much of UCNC’s selections forefronted percussion, beat, tempo, snare—however, I found myself most at ease when I could upend chairs and place them atop tables, sweep my shop clean, and listen to some piano pieces.

I was running the powdered cleaner through the portafilters when I heard the knock and looked to the front window.

Alex, haloed in the twinkly light of the bulbs I’d strung up against the retractable door, was waving and pointing toward the side entrance. I signaled, nodded back at her, and felt the tension that had been resting upon my shoulders since the battle in the warehouse ease instantly. Such levity I’d never much associated with anyone’s presence before, save perhaps my family. It was the first time I had looked to a human and relaxed… the first time I’d felt this way on earth.

The first time I’d _missed_ someone.

“Hey,” she said, entering with a grin. She ran her hand through her thick torrent of coffee-brown waves. There was no satchel this evening, no jacket, merely tight, dark pants and a plum-colored top that sparkled when she turned. The fabric looked soft. Her hair looked soft. Alex, Alex… looked…

I was so glad to see her.

“Hello,” I smiled, running water over the heads of the two handles before removing the grate. She took her customary seat atop the stool at the counter as I cleaned out the drip tray and reset it. She watched me as I dried the metal and slotted it back in place, then wiped down the countertops. I hummed a bit to the radio, and finally switched off the machine.

“Is that it?” she asked, once I’d completed the ritual.

“Pardon?”

“You finished shutting down?”

“Perhaps,” I said, chucking a dirty rag into the bin near the sink. It landed silently in the pile of other dish towels, which reminded me… I needed to run a load of laundry in the machines if we were going to have rags for mopping up spills at the tables on our busy Saturday morning.

“Well, _perhaps_ I think you’re deserving of a night out.”

“Out?” I repeated, swiping my last clean towel over the countertop again. There were no spills, but I found I needed something to do with my hands while she sat directly across from me, wearing… something quite different than what she normally did. There was dark powder brushed over her eyelids and more color to her cheeks than I’d seen in weeks. Her lips were painted with a shimmery, supple tint of pinkish-nude that looked nothing like the tacky stains some business women left in blood red on the rims of my coffee mugs. Thank Rao I could distract myself with the towel in hand and the register to my right, or else I would’ve been tempted to touch her.

After the fight in the warehouse, I felt more protective of the few connections I had forged in my brief years here. I kindly corrected Leah’s boyfriend after he treated her rudely on shift. Han and Jeremiah, I made special efforts to catch up with, inquiring about their studies as well as their personal lives. Jeremiah was perhaps a bit _too_ forthcoming with his extracurriculars—but nevertheless, I cared for both boys as if they were my youngest recruits. I could not protect them beyond these walls, but I suppose that loyal streak of concern would never truly die within me; it had only lay dormant until the catalyst—M’gann’s torture—stirred it to life once more. I was a general— _am_ a general—but it had been ages since I had anyone to fight for. I think then, I finally realized I had people I was willing to take risks for: M’gann, Connie, Han, Leah, Jeremiah—I would even make a point to check in on Cat Grant, given her usefulness at the warehouse.

And then, Alex.

Something about seeing M’gann, a _white Martian_ , being hurt, it made me want to touch Alex. Human, breakable Alex. I wanted to feel her whole and warm beneath my fingertips.

“I ruined your morning last weekend,” she said, tilting her head to the side. The black of her iris was wide and her breath smelled of alcohol. Her words were weighted and comfortable and her biceps were exposed and… the tilt of her chin, the way her hair fell over her shoulder blades… the color she wore, the confidence, so different from when we first spoke…

_Beautiful._

Such classic, easy beauty.

“The least I can do is make it up to you. We can…. see where the evening takes us,” she continued, placing her favored silver flask atop the counter. I eyed the vessel but didn’t drink, wondering, bizarrely, if espresso grounds were still covering my knuckles, and if my hair was falling from where I had tied it back for my shift. I felt uncomfortable and hot when she looked at me, almost as if I’d taken a draught of Trobystian mead.

“You didn’t ruin my morning,” I told her, turning next to count the register. I pressed buttons and mumbled to myself as I counted out the linen bills, feeling green history run beneath my touch. “You… you made it quite pleasant, actually.”

“I could do the same for your night,” she answered. I became rather distracted by the way her eyes gleamed like the surface of coffee in a mug, rippling rich and dark and deep. I had to begin counting the tens again.

“As much as I would like to—”

“Oh, come _on_ , Ashley,” she groaned, putting both hands forward and plopping her head down like some disgruntled child. “We’re two overworked grad students—and you’re a small business owner on top of that! You deserve a night on the town!”

“And what, exactly, would you have us do?”

“We can party and pretend we’re twenty again.”

“Alex,” I sighed, despising any reminder of what _age_ I was on this planet. There was no vanity associated with it, only the sense that I did not register time as I once had due to the tragedies that I’d lived through. It was also a reminder that Alex was indeed younger than I considered, if she believed _twenty_ to be an age starkly different than her own.

What was five years when suspended animation stole three decades?

“You remember my friend, Megan?” I asked her.

She straightened immediately and turned her attention toward the countertop.

“Yes.”

“She…she came to me because of a very—complicated situation. I… cannot go into much detail, but she was injured a few nights ago, and is staying with me. I do not feel it would be wise to leave her.”

“But you came to work,” Alex protested.

“She’s right upstairs,” I answered, looking back toward the narrow staircase that led to my apartment. The one Alex had ascended just last week. We’d shared breakfast. She had coffee in my kitchen. I grew embarrassed, thinking of how impractical it was to only have the sofa; I myself had admittedly been sleeping downstairs on the couches in the shop for two and three hour spurts while M’gann took the fold-out mattress above me.

Perhaps Alex would like to help me purchase new items for my apartment. Perhaps, in the light of day, when the powdered colors were wiped from her face and her cheeks weren’t flushed from alcohol, she would like to spend time with me.

“And I am not one for acting like an adolescent. You forget that I am the superior of several college students. What if they see me out and participating in some… drunken… revelry?”

My protests seemed to land on unsympathetic ears, for Alex had leveled her critical stare directly at me. She simply huffed, pushed off from the stool at the counter and rounded the bar, reaching into her pocket as she fiddled with the Bluetooth speaker.

“Guess the party’s coming to you, Ashley,” she said, before some quick tempo began playing and she pressed the screen of her phone, elevating the volume to levels I would've been more concerned with if it had been morning, if it were a weekday, if the yogis were upstairs concentrating on pigeons, crows, and other fowl—if Alex didn’t have her hands extended and her fingers curling in and out, obviously wanting me to grab hold and come out from behind the counter.

I was dubious, but agreed, for my mind had been wrapped up in the Byrakian, in ways to reveal myself to Kara, in M’gann’s health, in the threat against Cat’s life, in Connie and Jeremiah’s accounting finals... but Alex was right in front of me.

She took my hand and led me to an open space in the shop, then started spasming.

“ _Blehtkl_ ,” I swore under my breath. “What are you _doing_?”

“I’m _dancing_ , you spoiled sport,” Alex said, moving her hips and twisting the cap on the flask with a tremendous amount of dexterity. I likely should’ve been more concerned with how much she was swallowing instead of the way her head tipped back, tendons strained and taut in her throat. She wiped her lips with the back of her hand and smudged the painted nude shimmer. “Come on, a little liquid courage might help.”

I took the flask from her drank the remaining liquor, not because it would effect me, but because I didn’t want her having any more of it. The taste reminded me of a cheapened alcohol I’d drunk at an outpost on Wesclanch, certainly _not_ my favorite of all the places I’d visited. Alex’s eyes went wide and she bit her bottom lip as she watch me swallow; she then whooped, clapped me on the back, and attempted to spin me round in the tight space we navigated in front of the counter.

What I would have given for some hearty Kryptonian wine in that moment—that fast beat and Alex’s hips, the fabric tugging round the curve of her rib cage, her fingers tapping along my shoulders and migrating to pull my own hands and arms out, to dip around them, to twist and maneuver so that we found ourselves closer, tangled up and then unraveling. I smiled. We… _danced_ , if that is what the humans call it. There was no pattern to it, merely a bit of swaying, touching, laughter. Alex kicked her feet up and it was almost as if we were holding hands (or perhaps we did hold hands, let go, returned, released again, gravitated back toward the threading of fingers and spinning of bodies). We traded smiles back and forth as her music faded in and out. Her hand lingered near my waist. There was some off-key humming, a bit of song commentary. She took my hand and spun me round and I had to duck in order to twist below her extended arm. She was breathing hard after shout-singing the lyrics to some song I’d never heard, alone in the shop, placing one foot in front of the other and turning as she instructed me (“I can’t believe you don’t know the electric slide,” she teased. “My sister _loves_ line dances.”), I felt light enough to float.

The ease of the moment ended as suddenly as the music. The melody died as we stood scant inches away from each other, her fingers on my shoulder and my own hands perched lightly at the curve of her waist.

“Shit,” she muttered, fishing her device from her back pocket. She stared at the blank screen of her phone.

She staggered back from where I’d swept her up in my arms, swinging her about like some weapon I would wield on the battlefield. It was only to avoid a collision with the table (I would tell myself later in the evening), so that Alex would not injure herself while her equilibrium was slightly compromised. I did not think of how it felt to hold someone in such an intimate way. Alone. In low lighting. _Mood_ in this case, is universal, and I had done nothing to reject Alex’s advances.

Could you truly blame me? It was evident even then how fond we were of each other, even knowing so little of one another’s past. My interactions were oftentimes awkward and she was easily hurt, but we soldiered through those misunderstandings and somehow ended up at _fondness_. Dancing on Earth was like dancing on Krypton... it was indeed construed as _affectionate_. I felt that, and more, for Alex. I had not felt that way since I was younger than she was at the time, just out of Guild training and infatuated beyond reason with my commanding officer. I thought it was a superficial flirtation that I could indulge, but I should’ve known my own mind—my own _heart_ better. I had not responded so eagerly to this type of attention since landing here, but Alex persisted.

Thank Rao she did.

It simply took us more time than it should’ve. My hesitancy. Her self-destructiveness.

“I swear I charged this like… three hours ago,” Alex muttered, tapping her phone with her thumb.

“I would offer you a wire to recharge such a device,” I said. “However…”

“Yeah, yeah,” Alex rolled her eyes at me and pocketed her phone before continuing, “You’re one of the only people in the nation who doesn’t have a personal number. No wonder it’s been so hard to get a hold of—I—I mean, you answer at the shop?”

“When I am working, and the shop is open,” I said, turning to look at the old rotary phone I’d gotten on sale at yet another yard mercantile. M’gann had once again insisted on something vintage for the sake of pricing and aesthetic, but I honestly found the rotating dial infuriating. My workers had never seen such a thing before, and my fingernails kept making grooves in the plastic casing.

The station I’d originally set to play seeped through the speakers by default once Alex’s phone disconnected. After our vigorous turn around the room, the lilting piano seemed as slow as a human challenging me to a foot race.

Alex took my hand again and squeezed; unlike the twirling and sidestepping we’d done mere moments ago, the action was deliberate. It lingered. Despite my strength, the weight of her hand felt heavier than the compounded gravity on Dralhart.

“You want to?” she mumbled, looking deliberately at my shoulder when she asked.

“I…you saw how poorly I danced earlier,” I said, wondering why I did not pull away. I seemed incapable of controlling myself in that instant. “Alex, I…I wish you…”

“Ashley?”

I sighed, and hated myself for making more of the moment than what it was. She was 25, or 26, possibly? She’d cleaved to the walls of academia, had lived a life growing up on a beach on a healthy planet, miles and miles away from war and light years away from dying galaxies. My depth of feeling would have unsettled her, of that I was certain. I thought it best not to begin something she would grow tired of in time.

But just because I thought one way, did not mean I might not act another.

“Do not expect more from me than what I can give,” I warned her. It was cryptic, but it was the best I could do with her breath puffing against my cheek.

“Does that only apply to dancing?”

She grinned and ran her thumb along the bridge of knuckles while I waited for my senses to return. I waited for the sorrow and pain of Krypton to catch up with me; the guilt I often felt for merely living, for chuckling at my workers or learning a new theory (no matter how wrong or off-track it might be) or melting when Alex looked my way.

My people were dead, and I kept living.

There were moments in which I lived _happily._

I was able to enjoy parts of my life while Krypton’s ashes floated among meteorites and nebulas. It was hardly fair. Much like M’gann’s turmoil. Much like Rosalind’s death on Streld. But Alex was close and warm, and I was tired, and any protest I could’ve conjured up just seemed like yet another fight too many that evening.

When I stepped into her, she placed her hand on my waist, and I knew. I knew it would be as difficult to let her go as I had my family, my post, my planet. Perhaps not for others, but for me, for someone who understood even a fraction of what she was dealing with, in the abstract of that moment… oh, she would be so easy to love.

I placed one hand upon her shoulder and wrapped the other up in her fingers, letting our arms swing lazily at our sides, tiny pressures distributed between two very wary people. Her ear was near my cheek and my lips close to her temple. We swayed, we… we held each other and _danced_. I smelled shampoo and espresso and the faintest whiff of cigarette smoke. Beneath that, something faint, but slightly sour. Perhaps she was wearing undergarments she’d worn in the lab that week, and the fabric had soaked up the scent of embalming fluid. Perhaps it was the odor of chemicals beneath her fingernails. I was so caught up in her that I began the patterned steps from the Fellowship ceremonies of Krypton, as if I were young again, younger than 20, looking ahead to my parent’s match for me, my path to continue Instruction or to leave for the Academy, how my life would unfold after the Presentation and Ranking at the High Council’s Hall.

“You complete _liar_ ,” Alex said.

I was startled by the words but the tone was cheerful. I could not… I did not know to what she was referring.

“Pardon?”

“You do know how to dance,” she told me. “Properly, I would imagine, from that fancy footwork you just got caught up in.”

“I apologize.”

“Why?”

“I could’ve trampled you, surely,” I smiled.

“Not if you teach me.”

Somewhere in the shuffle she’d retreated and twisted her arms behind her. She was gripping the back of a chair and regarding me with such tenderness I had difficulty reconciling the moment against the cage matches I had witnessed two nights ago. Her brows inched up the center of her forehead and she looked as if she might repeat her request.

“Ashley?”

“I… the dance is not… American,” I said carefully.

“Anything beyond gyrating in the club is not American,” she smirked.

“We would need more room,” I said, crossing away from her to push a table back to the wall. She followed suit with two more tables, until we had cleared something of a path through the shop, perhaps thirty feet or so. It was not terribly far across, maybe the height of an average man; but I might’ve backed into the counter and Alex into the tables. From what I remembered of the movements, we would not need much space between us.

“So how does this thing start?” she asked, facing me, propping her hands on her hips as she studied the length of the shop. “I gotta pull out some cartwheels down this little alley here?”

“Nothing quite so athletic,” I told her. “First, take your position opposite your partner.”

“Gotcha,” Alex stood before me, feet spread about shoulder-width apart, arms hanging loose at her sides.

“Then, we Acknowledge one another.”

“How?”

“Typically a bow,” I said, bending forward at the waist and dipping my head, waiting for Alex to do the same.

“Is this a dance or a fight?” she joked.

“A bit of both,” I answered, for stepping in sync with another during the Fellowship often led to matches. Hastening or adjusting to complement the other’s tempo more often led to quarrels, especially if pre-arrangements had already been made between families.

“Then what?”

“Turn to your right, and place your left hand out, with the palm down,” I instructed. “Then I turn to the left, and place my right hand up. Then we walk in triple meter.”

“Triple?” she asked, staring at our hovering hands. “Like… like a waltz?”

“Sure,” I answered, unfamiliar with what human dancers might do with a _waltz_ structure. I couldn’t very well say that one beat represented each party in the match—the two partners, and Rao as their guide, walking down a path that represented their lives together on Krypton.

She nodded, and brought her hand down slightly.

“Wait, you cannot take my hand.”

“How will I keep time, then?” she asked.

“That is the point,” I answered. “Partners are not to touch in this ritua— _dance_ ,” I explained. “If… if it is ordained, so to speak, they will fall into time together.”

“Sounds a little hokey.”

I bristled, dropping my hand. I could very well go into how _hokey_ foam and glitter parties were for human dance clubs, how the lack of belief in something greater than themselves originally had me thinking how self-involved and simple-minded humans could be.

“Come on, you have to admit you can’t leave everything up to fate like that,” Alex insisted. “The world’s too unpredictable for it to fall into some greater plan.”

“Your reasoning works as evidence for destiny,” I argued with her. “The world—this one, and many others—there are so many things that can happen. Accidents, death, relocation, abandonment…do you think it wrong to take solace in destiny? To believe that there must be some awesome force far greater than you or I, leading us to where we need to be?”

“Can’t say I’ve ever been all that spiritual.”

“I fear I am,” I confessed, for even though my planet died, I could not lose my god as well. Rao protected me on foreign planets for _something_ … in that moment, I believed it was for Kara. To make it all the way here (so close!) after losing everything—I had to believe he spared me for her.

“Well, I don’t see why two people who disagree still can’t dance,” Alex offered, placing her hand back into position. “It just puts a lot of pressure on the couple, I think.”

“In what way?” I asked her, taking my position and settling my hand beneath her. I could almost feel the warmth of her skin radiating against my own. My hands were stained brown with coffee grounds and dirty sink water, but she did not seem to care. “One-two-three…” I counted, and we began the step.

“I mean,” Alex continued, rising and falling as she proceeded from her heels to the balls of her feet, looking to me to guide her. She mirrored my turn as we pivoted, changed arms, and came back the way we came. “You say matching each other on tempo, without any real music or anything to help you—”

“There is some music,” I protested, for my head was swimming with it. Loud, thrilling, gorgeous melodies that I had only heard once before.

I was all at once back on Krypton again—during my seventeenth cycle. Would I find a match at the Fellowship? Or would mother follow through on her agreement with the House of Ur? It was of no matter if one of us did not make the match—the agreement would still hold, as long as _both_ myself and Alura did not fall in step with someone else.

In this cavernous hall with the starry sky beyond the glass ceiling, with the wines and delicacies brought in for those select families or high-performers in the Instruction classes, it is just as common to find one’s match as it is uncommon. Somewhat of an ancient ritual, this fifty-fifty chance of success. With two In-Ze daughters, the odds seem equal--one will match, one will not. I can see my sister in her place down the line, blue robes flapping as she twists across from one of the El brothers, and they rise and fall in syncopated rhythm. It would be an utter tragedy not to honor their match.

And yet when I take my place in the line I do not expect to see hair darker than my own, cropped close in the military style. His smile seems sad, except for when he looks at me. He wears the black of the Military Guild and the lines of battle around his eyes. An unknown house but a rather remarkable man, who’d reached the rank of Captain at the Academy by virtue of his diligence… a similar situation to mine and Alura’s (two middle-born daughters with outstanding marks at Instruction).

I had once seen him commanding drills in the city. I remember thinking that I would one day be in the host of cadets fighting for Krypton. I remember our dance fondly, and how our steps seemed to have been plotted by Rao himself. But he was six years my senior, and his house was of no consequence. I had already pledged myself to the Academy—a late recruit, for my Instruction class did not yet want to lose one of their top performers. But I would join the Military Academy and I would see Captain Con-Tul everyday for two years even if I could not marry him.

_A conflict of interests_ , my mother’s voice rang in my memory. _Alura has fallen in with the House of El, Astra—it is too high a house for us to allow her to break a match, and yet we must honor the agreement with the House of Ur…_

My pledge to Non-Ur did not stop me from pursuing a relationship with a Captain who knew every step and stumble and leap along my untraditional path. Perhaps I still believed in fate, but not as deeply or with any degree of nuance. It was the naïve hope of an adolescent, of someone who still believed battles were meant for the battlefield, not the courts, or the senate, or the press. If word had gotten out of our relationship…I cannot think of the sanctions that might have been issued against me. Against _him_.

I thought it would be simple. I would go to the Academy. I would marry Non-Ur. I would do my duty by my house and my people, and I would have the Captain’s kisses in secret. An affair. A first love. A first loss, after our deployment to Yygdern IV. His blood on the white and blue snow, and my secret to mourn.

My dance to forget, until this instant, until Alex fell in step with me, and I felt myself destined for that passion once again, forty years later.

In my mind, I listened to the organ in the great gilded hall. My feet floated across the gleaming tiles and I saw all ages dressed in robes and uniforms and finery. Sound echoed from the glass of the windows and lights shone down on Alex and me as the fabric of our robes brushed together. I stepped across and then back again, never once touching, but perfectly, seamlessly mirroring.

Alex blinked, looking at me curiously, until the walls of the coffee shop on earth came back into focus around her. I wondered if she would touch me as Captain Tul had, defying tradition. I wondered if she could hear the music swelling relentlessly in her ears.

“Can’t you hear it?”

“No…not really,” she said, faltering momentarily before shifting her weight and skipping a step, eventually finding her way back to the movement with me.

“Hold your arm up like so,” I said, extending my arm in a L-shape. She did and I aligned our limbs so that our palms nearly touched, so that we revolved round each other on an axis of our own making. Then I stopped and she did, too; we both swapped our arms, and made the winding counter-revolutions once more. The turns were hypnotic, but… Alex, she had no idea. No sense of what this dance meant for me.

Why did I ask in the first place? Why did I dredge up old memories it would take me weeks… or _months_ to bury once again?

“Perhaps not as much pressure as I thought,” Alex answered as she turned out to her side of the room, and I to mine. I felt my breath coming in patterned huffs, though I was in no way winded. I could not be. But she stood there looking at me, and that is when I loved her. Too soon, too much, and too fiercely. My passion has always been my downfall. I learned to curb it as I rose through the ranks, but with no rank to uphold, why not give it free rein?

“I did not mean to… to… for you to experience any sort of pressure. To dance, or to come here, Alex.”

“No, it’s…” she stepped across the dull tile of the coffee shop floor, nothing like the halls on Krypton, and yet the gravitas of the moment seemed just as heady, just as important. “There is only pressure if you’re… if you like someone so much beforehand, and then, what if you mess up the dance? That’s just too much meaning you put on one thing.”

“You did not falter,” I said, closing my eyes when she took my hand. “Perhaps you knew inherently. Instinctively. Knowing...without knowing.”

“I don’t buy into contradictions.”

“And yet here you stand, holding my hand,” I responded, knowing what it meant to share a touch after a dance; or perhaps, knowing what I _wish_ it meant.

“How is that a contradiction?”

“You show me affection and… and I am so grateful for it,” I told her, knowing that _grateful_ could hardly do my feelings justice. “But you do not know me.”

“Seems like something we could remedy fairly quickly,” she joked. “I know this great little coffee place we could talk, sometimes. Get-to-know-each-other better, and all.”

She squeezed my hand once again, and I was lost:

“Would you rather I kiss you first, or tell you a secret?” My eyes were drawn to the shimmer of her lips, the flush of her cheeks. She was coming down from the high of her drink, and I was tired of fighting the voices telling me not to take what I wanted.

“Kiss me.”

“Are you certain?” Why, why would I keep asking her to question it?

“Please.” She wrapped her fingers in mine and leaned closer, her nose tilted beneath my own.

“But you might think…” As I spoke, I felt the phantom brush of her flesh, our proximity somewhat of a foregone conclusion in that instant. “You may not want to kiss me once I tell you—”

“I doubt it,” she hummed, so I placed my hands on her waist.

“Is this… is this alright?”

She nodded slightly, and took my cheek in her hand. When my lips finally touched hers, it did not feel like the first time. She tasted like oranges and Earth and zealous love, and it pained me all the more to know that I had surrendered too soon. My feelings were premature at seventeen and seventy-seven, but in the instant that we kissed I believed she would not judge me by my history.

I knew that Alex would be easy to love because she was like me, and, I had finally found the strength to love myself.

I took her kiss because I wanted it, not because I believed I could sustain whatever our fragile interactions had thus far developed. M’gann’s voice in my ears— _your human pet_ —as if Alex was nothing more than a passing fancy. As if I could ever forget a woman who kissed like she did. One hand in my curls, pulling me into taste, running her thumb over my cheek, flicking her tongue out to rub against my mouth—I had not kissed anyone so fervently in decades. She made it easy.

I made it difficult.

“I am married,” I confessed, once we’d broken our connection. She stiffened in my arms, and I berated myself for not speaking before I acted.

“M-married?” she repeated, but her voice was hoarse and her eyes were glassy.

“Was, I—I was married. Technically, I am still, but… it has been years _,_ Alex. I left him seven years ago and have not seen him since.”

“That’s… that’s… okay,” she said, taking a steadying breath through her nose. She shut her eyes and took several moments to breathe, which I granted her without pushing. She deserved answers as well as my patience. “I—I mean, like you said… maybe I don’t know so much about you.”

“It is not something I like to talk about," I shut my eyes this time, feeling unworthy. "But you should know.”

“I just… we’ve been flirting so much I’m just… surprised, I guess." Her hand in my hair, rubbing small circles into my scalp. Her breath on my cheek. The taste of her still on my lips. I was overwhelmed, inundated with  _Alex._ "Then again, I’ve never talked about any former—well, not that I’ve ever really had a former boyfriend or girlfriend or… I guess you gave me fair warning, though?”

I shrugged. Her hand fell from my hair and rested on my shoulder. By Rao’s grace, she did not pull away.

I still needed to find Kara. I needed to help M’gann. I needed to see Roulette destroyed, and Cat Grant safe, but I also needed Alex in my arms.

“Did I?” I asked, thinking of all the other secrets I was keeping from her.

“Ashley…”

_Like that one_.

“I am sorry I never spoke of him. I am sorry if I misled you.”

“I never asked about your past relationships,” Alex shifted from foot to foot as I held her, dipping her chin low. “But I do want to know _you_.”

“I never loved him,” I confessed. “He was an important part of my life for many years, and we were partners in a different sense, but… but no. I never loved him.”

“Then why marry him?”

“It was… complicated. We had similar objectives.”

“Was he a soldier, too?”

“Yes. A scientist, originally. We… we were friends. Or, well, we became friends.”

“Did he know?” she asked softly. Her hands on me, the uncertainty at the edge of her voice, as if he might return and take me from her at any moment. “Did he know you didn’t… that you and he weren’t…”

“I am not sure,” I answered. “I think he loved me far more than I him. And yet, I did care for him, in some ways… but in ways that were not—were not—”

“This?” Alex asked, standing on tiptoes to place her forehead against my own. She kissed me once again, briefly and sweetly, and I wondered if I might collapse from the weight of her affection. When she released me, her eyes went wide momentarily, as if I had startled her. As if she had startled herself.

“I… I mean… I didn’t mean to imply that I _love_ you, or…or anything…” she said, dropping her hands from my shoulders and taking a step back, as if to escape a notion she had stuck in her own head. “Don’t get me wrong, I—I would very much like to _date_ you, but I… chose my words poorly.”

“I believe this is where you and I differ, Alexandra,” I said, allowing her retreat, falling gently against the counter and sighing as she studied me. “I fear I do not know much of human roman—that is, how we might… _date_ ,” I said. Alex had just subscribed to an alien courtship ritual without truly realizing what she was doing, and it stung me to note that I might have violated her trust, somehow. “You see, I have done…” I looked up at the ceiling and prayed Rao would give me the words. “Alex, you must know I find you terribly intelligent. Clever, quick. I like that you listen to me when no one else hears me. I think that it does not often show, but there are streaks of loyalty and compassion within you, and—and you are so very beautiful.”

“And this is supposed to make me want to date you less?” she asked incredulously.

I ticked one careful brow skyward. “But you are young.”

_You are human_.

Alex sneered, the attractive fierceness I had loved in our previous debates coming out in its full force. “That’s bullshit. What do you have? Five, six years on me, tops?”

“The age is not—the issue is not your age, but you did say it yourself,” I tried to be reasonable, tried to be… to do the right thing. Listening to her might have been a good start, but I was implacable at the time, thinking I knew best. As if I ever did. “You have not had someone to yourself, and I am not the easiest to be with.”

“That’s certainly the case when you’re being patronizing,” she griped.

“Alex,” I pressed, feeling my cheeks flush hot with saddened embarrassment. “We know nothing of each other.”

“That’s what dating is!” she protested, motioning between her body and my own. “ _Getting_ to know each other.”

“Can we not do the same as… as friends?”

“ _You_ asked to kiss me, remember?”

“And now I find myself regretting it,” I said, placing my head in my hand.

Her jaw dropped and she clenched her fist, and that glassy haze that had once been signal to her lust had turned to hurt.

I had _hurt_ her.

“No, no, Alex, I did not mean…” I placed my fingertips at my temples and shut my eyes for a moment, breathing to keep my strength in check. I knew then that if I leaned against the counter I would break it, I would dismantle chairs with my pinky, crack tables apart with the flat of my hand.

“I am sorry. I did not mean—it is taking everything in me not to take you in my arms and kiss you again, and again, and touch you and prepare your bagels and your coffee and read over your papers and ask you about your sister and the memories of you father. I want to talk to you about your surfing and that silly band you like so much. You know I listened to the Pearl Jam? For you?” I was going to cry if she kept looking at me like that, and it seemed I was only making it worse. “I… it is not that I don’t want you enough to be with you, Alex. I want you too much. Slow is… difficult for me. If you are slow in the desert, you take a bullet to the chest. And if you are slow to leave, you will find yourself ten years into a marriage that has meant nothing to you.”

She made a meal of her inner jaw as her fingers fidgeted before her. She would look at me, and then away, and then back to me again, still no more sure of what she’d wanted to say than she had been originally. “I don’t… understand.”

“No,” I shook my head. “I am not sure I do, either.”

“You want… you want to make things exclusive right off the bat?”

_Rao._ I hated that terminology.

“I have been married, and I am looking for… if I were to _date_ you, it would not be casual. So much of my life has been spent fighting and sacrificing for things that have never come to me. So I know what I want, and I want nothing half-heartedly. If I need to put it in clearer terms, I could say that… that I have not dated for seven years because it has not been a priority. It is not something I believed was for me. Alex, I have no interest in dating. I did not think I had any interest in being with anyone ever again, and then you…”

“Ashley?” she whispered, taking one tentative step forward. She extended a hand in my direction as if to comfort me, to calm me, as if I were an animal in danger of injuring itself.

“I know that what I am saying sounds unreasonable, Alex,” I continued. “But I can either be with you, and you alone, or I can be your friend. I cannot navigate some uncertain in-between.”

“That’s not something I’m necessarily opposed to,” Alex answered.

“Not yet.”

“Why do you keep saying things like that? Like the second you tell me the truth, I’ll run away? I thought I took the sniper thing like a champ.”

“Alex, know that as a former soldier, an unresolved marriage is the least of my issues. It would not be fair to saddle you with that. So Alex, I implore you, let us be friends before we are lovers. You are already so precious to me that I could not stomach betraying you.”

“Then don’t betray me,” Alex said. “Simple as that.”

I did not have the strength to tell her I’d been lying to her from the start. That I had been lying to everyone, even M’gann, even _myself_ , for longer than I should have.

“Let’s just… pause this conversation, alright?” she suggested. “Tomorrow morning, I’m gonna bring in my final paper, and I’m going to get a coffee, and sit at one of those tables and look it over. You can check in with your friend and… and if she’s feeling better and you get a break, maybe we can take a walk, or something?”

“You would make it that easy?”

“If I can, then yeah,” Alex hitched one shoulder up, and dropped it, sticking a hand in her front pocket. “I might be failing out of grad school, but the least I can do is take a pretty girl out to the park.”

While sidewalks and breezes and holding Alex’s hand sounded more peaceful than I’d ever imagined my life to be, I’d had no idea Alex had been struggling with her studies. After the more pressing revelations of the evening, I was blindsided by the topic change. “Wait, you are…you are failing?”

“No, on probation,” she answered, her attention shifting from me to the floor. “My professors love my work, but I can never seem to get it in on time. I’m a semester behind schedule with my credits and I… I might have missed a few classes I was supposed to teach. But they’re eight a.m.s, everybody misses those—”

“Because of your drinking?”

She straightened, removing her hand from her pocket. Clenched her jaw. Twitched her cheek, involuntarily, probably. Then began shaking her head. “It’s not—I don’t have a prob—”

“Alex, I know I am not the only one here with issues that might… prevent us from pursuing something worthwhile.”

“I’ve got a handle on it,” she snapped.

“Your job is to teach. Are you being paid for those missed classes?” She looked off to the side, obviously hurt. “Alex,” I said, “wouldn’t it be better for the both of us if—if we could offer ourselves to each other when we’re truly ready?”

“I don’t like how you twisted this,” she muttered. “You’re the one with reservations, and I’m starting to think you want me a little angry, on the defensive, so that when you push me away I won’t fight you on it.”

“I have no intentions of pushing you away,” I insisted. “If I didn’t care for you, I would’ve never mentioned your drinking.”

“You never said anything before.”

“I think we have established that… that I do want something with you,” I murmured. “Perhaps not now, but eventually, and I think it best you take some time to sort yourself out. This is affecting your job and your studies, your _future_ , Alex. If I hope to have any part in that I want you to take care of yourself.”

She shook her head, sighing her discomfort. But I could tell in the loose, drooping set of her shoulders, the way her spine curved a bit inward, that I’d dealt a blow against which she had no defense.

“I feel like… maybe I need a coffee.”

I turned, thankful for something to do that involved pouring hot water instead of pouring my heart out. I found some coffee I sold by the half pound already ground. I opened the sealed bag and breathed in the scent of dark roast before setting the kettle. I made sure it was Alex’s favorite. She would put it in her to-go container and take up her position on the couch or at the table, tipping the flask over the lip. I’d noticed her drinking all the more as of late, for she had been taking a bit longer in adding to her cup with every ounce of liquid she poured, as if she needed more and more whiskey to get as drunk as she once had.

She settled on the stool across from the counter, how we began the night, and I marveled at the human notion of coming full circle. I felt safer with the counter between us, like I still had some measure of authority. General. General Manager. I smirked at the irony. While the kettle boiled, I put the grounds in the bottom of the French Press and waited, crossing my elbows and resting them overtop the counter where Alex stared at her hands.

“How long have you known?”

“As long as I’ve known you,” I answered. “I suppose I really started noticing during your third week here, when you began staying longer to study. You keep that flask in the outside pocket of your student satchel and… you are never without it.”

I did not tell her I could see through the material of her bag, which is how I knew with a certainty that she never left it behind.

“I thought I was hiding it okay,” she said, pulling away from me to rub a hand up and down her face. She ended up holding her chin, looking at me like I’d robbed her of something essential. Her peace of mind, most likely. Perhaps even she had not realized how much she had spiraled. “I didn’t think anyone would notice.”

“Oh, Alex,” I said, reaching out to touch her face, remembering what I’d told her the first time we’d spoken over late-night coffee. “How could I not notice you?”

She smiled, teary-eyed, as I lifted her knuckles and pressed a kiss against them. The kettle whistled behind me and I gave her a moment to recover, moving about to pour the water into the press. I stirred the brew quickly, then set the mesh screen in place along the glass edge and waited for the grounds to steep.

“Ashley?”

I turned round to her and watched as she moved her hair over her shoulder.

“Yes?”

“I’m not the most patient person,” she mumbled.

“I have not always been patient, myself,” I said, moving to the bookshelf where we kept the mugs. I pulled down the one with the NASA emblem on it, then moved to take another for myself. I heard the legs of the stool scrape across the linoleum floor and felt Alex approach from behind me. She took the mug I handed her, and we stood in the light of the retractable door, seeing each other differently than we had at the beginning of the night. It would not be the last time we would make new discoveries concerning the other.

“Though it has been some time since I found someone worth waiting for,” I confessed.

She chuckled, looking down at her mug, then back at me. Her brown eyes were bright, and I believed then, that our conversation that night might have been the worst of our trials.

How wrong I was.

“I don’t suppose there’s any chance you could grant me some incentive?” she asked, stepping closer, close as we had been when dancing.

“Incentive?”

“If I’m giving up whiskey, maybe… remind me of what I’m going to get a taste of later?”

I threw my head back and laughed, smiling widely. “If you ever want to give up your future as a scientist, I believe you would make quite the negotiator.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment, coming from a former soldier.”

We kissed one last time that evening, each of us holding a mug and something like a promise for the other person. “Ashley…” she mumbled against my mouth, moving to take my bottom lip between hers, the texture of her teeth barely scraping against my flesh. I could not stop the sound, the moan of satisfaction, that rose within me. Her free hand rubbed circles against my hipbone as I tried to make sense of everything that had happened since she sauntered in less than an hour ago. Alex, who wanted me as ardently as I wanted her. Everything she didn’t know about me… everything I would tell her, that she deserved to know, in time. By the time I'd found Kara, by the time I made sure M’gann was safe, Alex would know.

Alex could be… Alex could be part of my _family_.

“Oh,” she hummed, tucking her chin on my shoulder. “That is patently unfair.”

“What is that?”

“It’s like you don’t even need to breathe.”

“I simply wanted to make that last for a while,” I whispered to her. “I hope… I hope the taste was sufficient incentive.”

“Hmm, it will have to be.” She picked her head up from my shoulder and stepped back, then nodded once to herself. “I can think of only one thing that might taste better, at the moment.”

“Coffee?”

“Coffee.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sry not sry my week has sucked but that meant I spent all day saturday churning out this behemoth of a feelings chapter. I can't wait to actually start writing the angst yall are gonna hate me so much :D :D XD XD


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for mention of date-rape

 

CatCo is an impressive enough building, as far as human structures go. All sleek horizontal lines, from automated doorways to hand-washed windows to meticulously-designed logo (with san serif letters plastered over the top three floors, each one larger than most cacophonous, wailing trucks). The sign is mint green, a blue subdued; nothing that overpowers the eye when on the street. That power belongs to the building itself. Or, more a complex of buildings, stacked like blocks beside and atop each other, each with their own department, each with their own tiny human dramas and immense human struggles. The building is nothing compared to the stories inside of it—at least, that is what Cat Grant once told me on one of our many nights drinking together, myself with a clear, distilled Lunarian liquor, and Cat with a scotch she claimed she “wouldn’t dare waste on my unrefined alien palette.”

Of course, we had not yet reached such a level of caustic familiarity with one another on that first morning when M’gann and I touched down on the balcony of her corporate headquarters.

I was still reeling from my night with Alexandra. Before we had arrived at CatCo that Sunday morning, Alex had slipped into the shop five minutes before we opened and had taken her usual black coffee, asked after my well-being, smiled at me, and left with the promise of checking in on Tuesday or Wednesday. It had been so long since I had something to look _forward_ to, and yet I found myself praying time would pass, holding onto the nascent, unfamiliar hope of seeing her again. I marked it on the calendar I used to record the shop workers’ weekly shift schedules. In truth, I only started registering humanity’s calendars once I was put under the constraints of semester work and midterms and finals, hurdling around my student-workers’ ever-changing itinerary of classes and the seemingly arbitrary and bizarre holidays humans celebrate with varying degrees of reverence depending upon… well, their fickle fancy, I suppose.

I, for one, am far more interested in the February holiday celebrating a creature’s instinctual knowledge of an extended season than a holiday devoted to the country’s supposed founding via violent colonialism and the decapitating of ugly American forest fowl. Yet Groundhog Day goes by without a fuss, and Thanksgiving warrants the closing of multiple businesses and government buildings.

Mind-boggling, humans are.

Though my preferences for scheduling, calendars, and holidays, pale in comparison to the intensity with which Catherine Jane Grant regards such dates; her life revolves around them. Her company, I mean. Deadlines and spring issues, thirty-second spots and project planning manuals thicker than unabridged tomes from the Libraries of Sarlos—times, dates, and increments _matter_ to Cat Grant. She packs every second so full of productivity it’s no wonder she’s snide, impatient, superior; she is arguably more productive in two hours of her time than another human is in two days. It is admirable, and her behavior is understandable. I do not mind it; with her attention to regimented efficiency in certain aspects of her life (I dare not claim _all_ —that Sunday morning we stopped by she was wearing two sets of spectacles one overtop the other) she might have done quite well in the military.

We are not the same species, but we possess similar enough priorities that our styles for task completion mesh surprisingly well.

Or so I came to discover, when myself, M’gann, and Cat Grant stymied an off-world alien-trafficking ring and accidentally undermined the United States Military in the process.

But we will get to that eventually.

First, Sunday morning.

M’gann and I touched down at a decent hour, 9:30 or so (after I had opened and handed off the morning shift to Leah and Jeremiah). We waltzed round outdoor furniture with cushions softer than the lump I’d called bedding from the pull-out sofa in my apartment.

With M’gann at full strength again, I thought it best that we check in on the Grant woman, to make sure Roulette hadn’t threatened her once again, or followed through on any plan to orchestrate Cat Grant’s untimely demise. I doubt that any plan might have worked even if Roulette had set the gears of assassination turning, for Cat Grant looked far too busy to die any time soon.

“Do we announce ourselves?” M’gann mumbled at me, twisting her head to the side as we observed Cat Grant, attention divided between several laminated sheets of tiny square collages and her computer screen. The monitors behind her were black as my battle suit; music trickled through the speaker system wired into the anatomy of the building. Catherine Jane Grant hummed along.

“I am unsure,” I said, daring to step in the bright office.

It was composed of variouswhites and creams and sandy taupe egg-shells, punctuated with occasional color in a throw pillow of bold aqua or rigid black line. Eye-catching. Exact. This was the type of place that spoke as intensely as its inhabitant. I could never turn the space above my shop into something that represented me as fully as Cat Grant’s office represented her—I did not have the interest or the talent for it—but I took note of design, of the subtle rhetoric of decoration. Striking, professional décor for a striking, professional woman. Dirty cage fights for dirty alien miscreants. Low lighting, warm, plush sofas and comforting strains of acoustic covers for patrons sipping coffee.

_Ambiance,_ M’gann would tell me.

“Cat?” I spoke up, but she did not turn her head toward us. Instead, she kept typing, touching the temple of her glasses to readjust them.

“Cat Grant?” I tried again, and that time, I at least got an index finger raised momentarily in my direction.

M’gann and I were both rather amused; normally, we were the ones making dismissive hand gestures in the faces of our respective patrons. Plus, it had been quite some time since someone did not drop their task immediately upon my summoning them. I would not call it refreshing, but it did serve as reminder that I was a general no longer.

She hit one more key and her shoulders rose, then fell. She slumped back rather limply in her chair and rubbed at the bridge of her nose before pushing out of the impressive lavender chair and stalking over to her bar. There were leafy green stalks of vegetables and a rather large container of juice that looked like blood with small textured seeds and strings in it— _tomato_ juice, M’gann insisted. Having bartended far longer than I had, she knew not just the intergalactic offerings, but also humanity’s morning drink preferences as well. Cat took a paring knife and began slicing a lime.

“Can one of you run to the side office and pick up the packet I just printed?” Cat asked, which, was far nicer than the commands I imagined she threw at her employees.

“We don’t work here,” M’gann said.

“Out the glass door, take a left, second right down the hallway, large printing room. Check printer number one,” Cat insisted, and I was back with the papers before she’d finished shaking the Worcestershire bottle.

“Well, aren’t you terribly handy,” she said, plucking one pair of glasses from her head and readjusting the other that they sat squarely on her nose. She was “dressed down” that morning, but even in her weekend work wear she looked far more impressive by human standards than either M’gann or I. In our olive jackets and faded denim, we seemed the exact sort of riff-raff with whom Cat Grant would never consort, not when her jeans were perfectly tailored to her slim hips and dainty legs. The small plastic buttons that ran up the center of her torso had the label of the light blue Oxford shirt’s designer etched into it so discreetly one would not know such a marking existed had they not possessed exceptional sight like my own. What truly struck me was that her hair was pulled away from her face, pinned up in some pseudo-elaborate style that had come casually undone as she worked her morning away. She was terribly refined for such informal work, and I noted not for the first time what an attractive woman she was.

M’gann took a seat even though we had not yet been offered. But I doubted Cat Grant would pick a fight after having watched M'gann shape-shift into a Green Martian hardly a week previous. M’gann was warier than I, as to be expected, for she had only my testimony of Cat Grant’s character and no other impression of the human save for the few minutes since our arrival.

“Astra, was it?” Cat asked, turning over her shoulder as she swished the icy contents of her glass with a large celery stalk. "Kryptonian."

“Yes.”

“And you?” Cat asked, looking toward M’gann. “You were… in significantly worse shape the last time I saw you. That is… I assume that was you.”

M’gann’s jaw twitched uncomfortably and her eyes shuttered in my direction. I wondered if she was probing the surface of Cat’s mind, feeling for any circumspect intentions the human might have been hiding from the pair of us.

“I am M’gann M’orzz,” M’gann replied, lowering her head in cautious respect. “You are the one who wishes to dismantle the bouts.”

“I had assumed you’d be here to follow up about Veronica,” she whistled, stirring her celery stick once more before taking a sip from a clear straw. She extracted the dripping vegetable and crunched into it, wiping politely at the corner of her lip with a cloth napkin from her coffee table. She gestured toward the couch, and I took a spot there.

“Indeed,” I answered, performing a cursory scan of the floor on which Cat was working this morning. Aside from a janitor vacuuming roughly three flights down, the building was deserted save for our trio of diversified species. “I see that you are well. Veronica has not attempted any retaliation against you, I hope?”

“None that could penetrate the inner sanctum,” Cat gestured grandly to the office. “There are significant security measures to the complex, and I keep an apartment on one of the floors from twenty to twenty-seven. I don’t disclose exactly which, for safety reasons, I assure you—”

“You’re lying. The apartment is on 32, second from the top,” M’gann said.

Cat gripped her drink a little harder and her eyes widened infinitesimally. I did not think for a moment that Cat Grant would be scared of either of us, but then again… our last interaction would’ve undoubtedly overwhelmed any human with a weaker disposition than Cat.

“Take care with what you tell us,” I warned her. “M’gann is from Mars.”

“Mars?”

“Mars,” M’gann confirmed. “It tastes nothing like the chocolate candy you have here, I assure you.”

“Mars…” Cat whispered, trying not to sound flabbergasted, impressed, or astounded, but coming off… vaguely disinterested. A completely contrived response, I noted, but again, her air was not something I was used to in human demeanors despite my being able to read her rather well. She was powerful and she knew it; however, she was unaccustomed to being around other beings with far greater power than her own. “And what might that have to do with what I tell you?”

“You are a journalist, correct?” I asked, and she nodded. “Call her… something of a fact checker. M’gann will know if you are lying—Martians have the most advanced telepathy in your galaxy.”

“She can…” Cat turned from me and stared into M’gann’s large brown eyes, brimming with soft suspicion and centuries of wisdom. “You can read minds?”

M'gann paused and simply stared at Cat. Her brown skin glowed under Cat's lights and she looked ethereal, ever as attractive as Cat, but wise, patient, where Cat was cunning, quick. M'gann seemed to read the woman's entire self in an instant, and sought to absolve her worries with a whispered oath: “I swear upon my life, Sinclair will not touch your son."

Cat Grant blinked and eyed us both, taking another sip before completely ignoring the last comment and forging ahead. It was a telling move on her part, and endeared her all the more to me, though again—like so many instances over that tenuous year—I did not recognize the feeling at the time.

“Those papers might do you some good,” she inclined her head, switching from gnawing on the vegetables to sipping on the liquid. The ice clattered in the glass as she set it aside, pulling one leg up underneath her as she took a seat opposite me on the far end of the sofa.

“What do you know of Veronica?” M’gann began. “Astra has told me of your… investigation? Is that what you call it?”

“Ruination has such a better ring to it, and I carry no badge other than the one of pride I boast as owner of this company,” Cat chirped. “But investigation… sure. I would have to write _that_ piece myself, considering the scale of the operation.”

“We don’t understand you,” I said, for M’gann and I had discussed Cat Grant and her involvement prior to arriving. She could feign blasé disinterest all she wanted, but I could see that our arrival, coupled with M’gann’s telepathy, and the mention of Carter, who I would come to know and cherish, had rattled her more than the actual threat on her life.

Death threats, she had experienced.

Alien partnerships? Perhaps not.

“I had a feeling you would seek me out eventually, if you really wanted to do something about the Sinclairs and their influence,” Cat soldiered on. “I mean… aside from the physical side to things, I’m arguably the most powerful person in this room.”

Apparently, she needed the verbal reminder, but I felt the need to object.

“I do not know how true that—”

“No, I am,” Cat interrupted, pointing at the stack of papers that I’d placed on the coffee table before us. “That is everything I have on the Sinclair Trust. Old American industry money from a pharmaceutical giant that made some big strides with dialysis, insulin and diabetes research as early as the 20s. They've made a killing ever since. Their stocks are tied up in Big Pharma, and they have buy-ins from companies all over the world—Pfizer, Roche, Johnson & Johnson, those are the kind of toes you’re stepping on when you go up against people like the Sinclairs.”

M’gann stared at me and I back at her, rather dumbstruck by Cat’s little speech.

“We are… less concerned with where Veronica comes from than with what she’s currently doing,” M’gann tried, calm, smooth, diplomatic. “We are less interested in Mr. Roche or… the Johnsons? Unless they have some involvement with the alien trade.”

“Ooooooh,” Cat tsked, shaking her head as she reached for her glass once again. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with, do you?”

I wanted to tell her that _she_ had very little idea with whom she was dealing with, but held my tongue. I did not much appreciate human arrogance, but when it was being directed toward a common enemy, I could keep my pride in check.

“I know it would not take much to snap her spine,” I suggested, reaching for the pile of papers that seemed to contain all of Cat’s knowledge. “But I have a feeling you would not be amenable to such a plan?”

“The Sinclairs have enough family members that one will pick up where Veronica left off, paralysis notwithstanding.”

“I had gathered, overhearing your conversation in the warehouse… Veronica is the—niece?” I chanced. “Is that correct?”

“Vladimir and Vivian Sinclair are but one branch of the Sinclair family, even though Vivian is the primary benefactor for the stock… 60%, or something outrageous like that,” Cat began. “Vlad married into the Sinclairs, but Vivian did not change her name. Why would she? When it holds that kind of power and her other option was to tie herself to the Russians—take Vladimir’s and change to _Egorov_.”

“Vladimir is not a Sinclair himself,” I repeated. “And how does Roulette fit into all of this?”

“Who?”

“Veronica.”

“Oh,” Cat rolled her eyes, then took another sip of her drink. “How quaint. Sounds like a title she picked for herself. Veronica is Vlad and Vivian’s _niece_. Their daughter, Violet, very much lives up to her name. The shrinking aspect, you know. She excelled in lab work but was far too timid on the business side of things; they were going to hand over the reins to their son, Victor, but he’s still young—only in his second year of college, and not nearly as bright as his sister. There are more cousins coming out of the woodwork—Veronica is one of them—and more side ventures, like this alien trading nonsense, cropping up as the current generation prepares to cede their power to the millennials.”

“But Veronica is not the public face of the company?” I asked, trying to keep up with the story Cat was weaving before me. I still did not feel like I had all the pieces. “What does she gain from all of this that she could not gain through diligence and commitment to her job?”

“Did you not just hear what I said?” Cat asked. “They’re handing it over to the _son_.”

“Who is too young and incompetent to handle such responsibility. It does not make sense to grant power to someone who cannot wield it properly.”

“But what will it look like to have a woman as the face of the company?” Cat asked knowingly.

“You just said Vivien had a 60% share in the company stock,” M’gann chimed in. “That her husband married in and she didn’t take his name—”

“And all the while, Vivian’s two brothers, Vincent and Vernon, have play-acted as company heads for the sake of the press. Female CEOs are rare and receive more criticism and scrutiny than you could ever imagine. It is sexism to the severest degree, especially with Vivian pulling the strings behind the scenes. But, she stays out of the press, and it has helped her daughter—Violet, remember?—pursue her studies in biological pharmaceuticals. That girl’s going to cure Type II all by herself in another 15 years.”

“This still does not explain the alien trade,” I told her, exasperated. “The fights, the barbarism… it cannot be that lucrative compared to what the family accumulates during their normal business operations.”

“True, but would it surprise you that a majority of the investors are the ones attending the parties?” Cat asked. “It’s like a company perk.”

“… watching aliens kill each other is a _perk_?” M’gann gawked.

“A disgusting, vile perk, but a perk nonetheless,” Cat said. “And remember, they are a biomedical pharmaceutical company. Contracts with the government, research with the FDA… so well-connected you’d need the Jaws of Life to pry that power out of their hands.”

I tried to steer her back to the topic at hand. I was coming to realize that while Cat Grant did well with context, she was prone to over-elaborate metaphors and loosely-connected tangents.

“What does that have to do with the _aliens_ , Cat?” I asked.

“Veronica had something foul bubbling up in those vats of hers…” Cat offered. “What do you suppose that was?”

“I have no idea,” I answered.

“Didn’t you see those sticks? Weapons, that enabled her goons to fight off aliens ten times stronger than themselves? Where do you think they got the technology?”

“You think the Sinclairs are manufacturing substances to harm aliens?” M’gann asked.

“Yes, and I think they sell it to the military. Not only that, I think they take the losers of those fights and use them as guinea pigs. Just look at you two. Human, for all the average Joe on the street might see. Your anatomies are likely similar enough that the Sinclairs think they can skirt some regulations for drug trials and release products to the military faster if they can get past some of the extended trial stages,” Cat continued. “Veronica is running her own gambit, using the shadier side of her aunt’s company to bring in investors and chemists—like Wilson Laurent? He was the French scientist from ENS—the École?—who discovered Kryptonite.”

“Kryptonite?” M’gann asked.

“Yes, Krypto—surely you’ve heard of it?” Cat said, then turned to me, but I had no frame of reference for the strange word either. Only that it rang like Krypton, and I wondered at the connection. “Astra?”

“No, I am unfamiliar with such a discovery.”

“But you’re… don’t you know Superman?” Cat asked.

“Kal-El is a distant relation of mine, but only through marriage,” I explained. “He was a child when Krypton… when we lost our home.”

“...lost it?”

“Hasn’t Kal-El spoken of this in his papers?” I asked, exasperated that talk of a problem on Earth would have me dredge up pain from my past. “Yes, Krypton died, and it could’ve been prevented— _I_ could’v _e_ —could’ve—”

“Astra, speak no more of this,” M’gann insisted, taking my hand and staring Cat down fiercely. “We are not characters in some story that will sell your periodicals, Cat Grant, so stop thinking of us as such,” she snapped.

“Force of habit,” Cat mumbled, reaching for her glass and giving me a moment. I had not come to her office prepared for such an inquiry, but it seemed Cat knew more of Kal-El’s role on Earth than I had ever bothered to investigate.

She cleared her throat after another hearty sip, and continued: “Back to topic. Sinclair has ties with the people who discovered Kryptonite… it’s some shiny rock that weakens Superman, so, I bet it could affect you as well, Astra. Just as all those other chemicals they’re developing can hurt all sorts of other aliens. They’re stock piling for chemical warfare in preparation for alien invasion, and using those fights as a recruiting tool for test subjects. But with the military behind them—”

“How do we stop it?” I asked, ready to take some sort of action. I was more than uncomfortable with all I’d heard that morning, and suddenly yearned for the rush of battle.

“By legal means, first,” Cat insisted. “You go in and start punching people, you’re committing assault, destruction of property, B&E, and who knows what else.”

“But what will it matter if we don’t stop it?”

“They’ll paint you as the villain,” Cat said.

“My reputation is of little concern to me. I have another identity I’m willing to hide behind if it means saving those fighters from further _torture_ ,” I insisted. I felt the shadows of Rozz creep over the back of the cream sofa, skitter up the glass walls, and droop low in an office with twenty-foot ceilings. It is not an easy sensation to shake, even after years of distance.

“But not all other aliens _do_ ,” Cat protested. “If you cast yourself as the aggressor, the media will have a field day and the anti-alien PACs will only be justified in their bigotry.”

“ _You_ are the media,” I argued. “Have a… rainy day, or a forest day, or a whatever-day you need to stop such thinking.”

“As much as I would like to believe, I am not the sole media outlet in this country,” Cat sighed. “I cannot write a story where the players go rogue. Work with me, and we’ll do some intensive investigative work… I can probably get all the corroboration I need and a few people to go on the record if you give me six months.”

“ _Six months!?_ ” M’gann and I both jerked our heads toward each other.

“No,” I insisted. “That’s too long a time frame. Too many more fighters could be hurt.”

“No, only thirty-six.”

“What?” M’gann asked. “How do you quantify that?”

“Well, these fights occur, _at most_ , once a month,” Cat said. “Here in National City, that is. Take three bouts with six aliens total, multiply that by six—roughly 36 aliens, not counting repeat fighters. Although, I imagine Veronica’s off in Metropolis or down to Rio or Budapest or Tokyo, wherever they have a corporate headquarters, hosting other fights… But I cannot go to Rio or Tokyo on a whim, not with a company to run.”

“Are you sure that you want to help us, or that you simply want good press for your company?” I asked.

“The fact that helping you helps my company is not something that I can control. To keep my brand at the top of the list of most-trusted medias is a constant battle—and a work of this significance will require an exceptional amount of discretion. If it needs being said, I am pro-immigrant, and pro-alien as a result. People who come here…” Cat stares out the window for a moment, and I wonder which of her many trials she was reliving in that brief moment that she talked us out of violence. “…only want to make something of themselves. Find a new home.”

“I agree,” M’gann said, and I nodded sullenly between the two.

“I would need you—the both of you—to fight,” Cat said.

“You cannot be serious,” I said. “Has your small human mind been damaged by the fruit juice since we began this conversation? We are trying to _stop_ the fights, not _participate_.”

“Not if I’m to humanize you.”

“How dare you.”

Cat scoffed. “I mean in the realm of public opinion. If this story gets written, and written correctly, the tides of public opinion will turn, and the government will open up an investigation _into itself_ , and dismantle the Sinclairs without us having to kill anyone.”

“No, just severely maim,” I grunted, thinking of how long it had been since I’d stepped into a sparring room with anyone. “What if we end up fighting each other?”

“Trade off,” Cat offered. “For the first month, M’gann fights. From my understanding, you wouldn’t be there if you didn’t have to, so she must have you roped into a contract, somehow.”

“Blackmail, and we’ll say no more on that,” M’gann said. “Not for the moment, anyway.”

“Very well. But you, Astra, can fight on the months M’gann does not. It will be tedious and painful and undeniably difficult, but both of you seem as unsusceptible to physical harm as any being I’ve ever read about.”

“There are other kinds of tortures, Cat,” I said. “If it were only a question of physical harm—”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Cat interrupted. “Threaten my life all you want, I couldn't really care less… but come near my son…” again, with the skyward look, the sheen of tears in green eyes. “Let me tell this story. Let me help these people, these _immigrants_ , and you two… you’ll be the faces of the pro-alien movement.”

“We cannot be your…faces,” M’gann insisted. “There is much you do not know of us. You can—can—change our names! Use parts of our stories, but you can’t…”

“You cannot bring our crimes upon this world of yours,” I finished for her. “And between the two of us, we have enough sins to drown your world in devastation.”

“That sounds like a heavier conversation for another morning,” Cat insisted, sliding the stack of papers she’d printed off at the start in my direction. “Come back, same time next week, and we’ll talk. I’ll need to know you, or as much of you as you can share without the threat of impending alien invasion hanging over our heads. In the meantime, read up on the Sinclairs. This is a draft I started about their company, their family connections, top investors, biggest contracts—it will help if we’re all on the same page.”

“Great, more homework,” I muttered, thinking about my fifty-page lab report due to Professor Tillman by Friday. M’gann and I stood, regarding Cat Grant in her weekend-wear, the animated tension that overran her face as she advocated for the story. I do not know if we were impressed or merely out of options, but the woman knew much of the Sinclairs, and much of earthly perception.

If we could not dismantle the operation with an attack, we would need her to help us start chipping cracks in the Sinclairs’ foundation. With any luck, that evil family would ruin themselves.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

We were swamped the following Saturday morning, and Leah was half an hour late. Han and I were having to field orders and the register, so we scurried between the blenders and brewers and pour-over drips. Connie was plating and bagging pastries left and right, whizzing from the display case to the back of the house to warm the breakfast melt sandwiches and stuff the to-go bags with the appropriate number of napkins.

Even with four of us, it could still get busy.

Short-staffed, it was chaos.

“Brain!”

I shouted, placing the ceramic mug and saucer with Han’s carefully crafted _B_ floating in the milk foam.

“Brain!” I yelled again, when no one moved for the drink. I whizzed to the half refrigerator and extracted the almond milk for the next order, eyeballing the amount for a medium and whipping the steam wand to _scorch_.

“Ashley, _Brian_ ,” Han yelled at me from the register.

“Oh, Brian!”

“I know you’re swamped,” Alex addressed me over the squeal of the steam wand.

It was not often that I saw her so cheerful so early, and I had not spoken with her at all since our outing on Wednesday (when we had absconded to a homegoods store in which I purchased long, heather gray curtains with purple strips of fabric running along the bottom). She had offered her admittedly little decorative knowledge as I thumbed through selections of fabric swatches, but I'd love spending time with her. After scanning all of the materials Cat had given me concerning the Sinclairs, Alex and homegoods and coffee at the university were all on another level of existence for me. Every conversation between Alex and me was charged with an indescribable electricity, as if we were ever on the precipice of something significant. Squeezing her hand when she left the shop Wednesday, it felt as if I’d had one of the rejuvenation vitamins from Flandor injected directly into my chest. I felt like floating.

Even as the milk burbled and the steam wand screamed, I had to double-check my feet to make sure I _wasn’t_ floating.

“—but me and my sister are gonna be holed up on my back couch," Alex motioned back to her usual spot in the far corner of the shop. "She’s already gone to fend off the masses for a seat. Come see us, if you can!”

That was my first missed moment.

I could’ve saved over a year of toil if I’d only slowed down to speak with her. But I had the shop, and my studies, and Cat Grant and the Sinclair fights and something like a life, all competing for my attention when at the outset my objective had been so singular.

Kara.

Find _Kara.._

But the students and neighborhood regulars kept coming and so did the orders, and that meant I couldn’t see Alex, I couldn’t rest, and I missed Kara.

“Connie!” I shouted into the back. “Did you call Leah again?”

“She didn’t pick up!” Connie yelled.

“If she were in my command…” I grumbled, returning to the three ceramic mugs I had lined up before me, as well as the two to-go cups. Black lids, two heat sleeves, and a chocolate covered espresso bean atop the lid to garnish.

I deposited four triple-shot lattes in front of the man talking into his phone and handed off the bag of bagels with more of a sneer than a smile. Leah had come skulking in from the counter behind me, and kept her hat low and her head ducked, as if I would overlook her tardiness. Now, I have never reprimanded my staff in the open; I find public shaming disgraceful, and a poor motivator for improvement. It was strange that Leah had not called or alerted me, for her punctuality was somewhat legendary; but I could not allow her to pass without a reprimand, lest my other workers believe they could form lax habits with their scheduled check-in times.

“Leah,” I said sternly, approaching the avenue of blenders set against the back wall. “In future, it would bode well for you if you called whenever you had an--”

Leah looked up from the syrup she’d been pumping into the blender, and my heart sank.

She’d caked makeup underneath her eye, but there was no hiding the split above her brow line. Or the one at her lip. She jumped when Han called the next name on the list and shrunk back when I attempted to place my hand on her shoulder.

“Connie,” I yelled to the back.

“Yeah, Ashley?”

“Call Jeremiah and get him up here.”

“But he’s not on the schedu—”

“This is an emergency. I do not believe he was due back in San Diego until Thanksgiving.”

“And if I can’t get him?”

“You and Han do your best,” I said, reaching for Leah. “Leah,” I said to her, peaking under the brim of the black ball cap she’d stuck on her head for her shift. “We will go up to my apartment, okay?”

Leah sucked her lips in between her teeth and nodded as the blenders hollered and raged.

Those blenders had nothing on me once I found out the truth.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“He raped you?”

“He’s my b-b-boyfriend,” Leah stuttered, wiping at her eyes with the tissue I provided. I set a cup of tea down before her that she didn’t touch, though I imagine she wouldn’t want to eat or drink anything after her trauma. “Or… almost? We’ve… we were… sort-of official at midterms.”

“That does not matter,” I told her calmly, despite the frantic indignation that I was grappling with. “Drake, was it?”

“Blake,” she corrected me, propping her elbows on her bent knees as she dropped her head in her palms. “I didn’t…we weren’t even fooling around. It was just—we were _studying_. He has a stats final, and if he doesn’t pass, they’ll bench him for the season opener and—”

“I fail to see how that has any bearing on what happened to you,” I responded.

Sunlight was streaming in through the windows on the west side of the apartment. I had not gotten around to hanging my new curtains that I'd bought with Alex (I had hoped to ask her over to help me, though I did not think I would need much help. It was merely an excuse to see her, and I found myself contriving all sort of excuses as the week went on).

However, Alex had left my mind entirely. I felt incensed, full of wrath; Leah's story left me aghast at the bastardized notion of humanity's justice, just as Cat's had when she'd broken down that the alien fighting was not _technically_ illegal. Leah looked so small on my second-hand sofa, clad in her barista black that looked more like funeral wear for any sense of safety she once harbored.

“Leah, whatever pressures he was facing academically, it gives him no right to your body,” I told her, as gently as I could. I knelt before her on the floor and attempted to maintain eye contact. “Can you tell me what happened?”

She took several moments and then one deep, ragged breath: “We were… we were in the athletics building, studying late. He… he kept mixing up the formulas and the books… He asked me to program the codes into his calculator, but I… I wouldn’t, I could lose my spot on the tutoring roster if they found out I’d… I had…”

“Shhh, it will be alright.”

“Connie told me he was just using me for the homework,” Leah sobbed, squeezing her eyes shut against the bright. I was suddenly embarrassed for not having hung the curtains myself.

“Do you believe that to be true?”

“I don’t know,” Leah cried, wiping frantically at her face. She winced at the bruising when she brushed her eyebrow, so I rose from my knees and went to the icebox, busying myself with making an ice pack.

“Leah… did this happen last night?”

She nodded. “He was so pissed he had to study on a Friday.”

My mind was racing, for I didn’t know the full procedure for reporting this type of crime. “And… did you alert anyone?”

I heard her gulp, then saw her reach shaky hands for the mug of tea. She took a small sip and then held it, cradling the warmth in her hands.

“I’ve got my clothes from when… from when he…”

“Good,” I cut her off, trying to save her from the pain of verbalizing it again. “That’s good.”

“I had to shower,” Leah said, staring aimlessly into the depths of her mug. “I… I talked to a campus police officer when I got out of the athletics building. They always do patrols, but…”

“ _But_?” I asked, wondering how low the standards must be for policemen here when the Military Guild on Krypton was given such honor.

“He told me to keep my head down,” she said. “That a name like Blake Delaurier wouldn’t get benched even if he killed a nun.”

“That’s what he told you?” I hadn’t felt such rage since my first days in Rozz.

“It’s not like it’s any different than… were you here for the case in 2015? I really shouldn’t be surprised.”

“This is _not_ acceptable, Leah,” I insisted. “You need to report him.”

“I don’t… I showered, Ashley. Who’s going to believe me when Blake’s—”

“They’ll believe the bruise on your face,” I told her, insisted, moving close enough that should she reach for me, I could in turn reach for her. Solidarity was all I could provide, but, Rao help me, I could not see beyond that perfectly distilled moment in time—when Leah looked at me and all I saw was a little girl whom I had failed once before, on a desert planet, and another girl who I have been failing for years, for not finding her sooner.

Tired of lost causes. Tired of failure.

“Someone must bring him to justice.”

“Don’t be so naïve, Ashley,” Leah spipped at me, and for all her soft-spoken ways, she could, apparently, bite back. “I know how this works. I got duped. Better luck next time.”

“No. You do not get to… you cannot just accept that this is the way things work,” I cajoled her, pushed her; she’d saved the clothes from the attack and the injuries were still fresh. That was evidence in its most straightforward sense—though I would yet learn that victims were put through horribly invasive procedures in order to satisfy the burden of proof. “I’ll go with you to report it.”

Leah chuckled humorlessly. “And you promise not to feel bitter when nothing happens?”

“He will be brought to justice,” I said, and felt my sister’s voice ring loud and sure within my chest.

Leah sighed, wiping, with hopeless finality, against the splashes of tears across her cheeks. She’d cried her foundation away, so I could see just how sickly green and purple the bruising looked. “You… you really will come with me?”

“Of course,” I said, placing a hand against her shoulder. “Superman could not keep me away,” I said, and meant it wholeheartedly.

“I don’t think this falls under your responsibility as a boss,” Leah sniffled. “God, mom’s gonna kill me—”

“You?” I said, appalled. “I think someone else deserves a killing.”

“It’s…” she seemed tired, so tired, unable to fully complete a thought. The longer she stewed over it, the more muddled the memory of the attack would become.

I knew from transcribing field reports that the memories from the attack, while jumbled or half-complete, came best immediately after the incident. The longer you have to process, the longer you have to rationalize and suppose, which distorts the entire action in most cases. I needed to get her to the authorities as soon as humanly possible.

“Let’s go now,” I said. “We’ll pick up your clothes, and get it over with. And take the week, Leah.”

“No!” she gasped. “Please, I need the money and… and I don’t know if I’ll be able to go back to the athletics center—”

“Just the week,” I repeated. “If you need money, I will issue a small loan, with a payment schedule that will not commence until a year after graduation.”

“Ashley, you can’t…” Leah’s face squashed in on itself, and her bruising looked the worse for it. She was a delicate girl with wavy, strawberry blondeish hair, an easy and timid manner and a mind for numbers like no other. She was efficient and polite and a long way from home… from what I could recall, her resume listed a permanent address in Colorado.

She had as much experience with violence as I had with peace, and my soul grieved for her.

“You can’t just give me money.”

“I can do whatever I want,” I rebutted. “You need it far more than I do. You have the out-of-state installment plans set up for paying your tuition, isn’t that right?”

“You can’t front my tuition for the month—”

“Leah, you’ve forgotten that I am the boss here, and will do what I can to ensure my employees’ best performance. If financial stability can help you through this difficult time... if accompanying you to the campus police headquarters will help in any way, then I shall.”

“Ashley… I… thank you,” Leah managed, finally sobbing, grieving, falling apart against my shoulder.

“It will be okay,” I told her, cradling her broken body in my arms, pushing down memories of Rodisia and Streld and a child's blood in the desert, choking on my own hope for Kara. “It is okay, Leah. I’ve got you.”

 

 

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all i kinda hate this chapter it was all so hasty cuz it's been two weeks and like... i have less and less time to write and it's making me :/ 
> 
> i haven't watched the last two eps of Supergirl cuz TIME and overTIME and a smidgen of personal TIME and also the show is like... not really something I enjoy anymore? not enough to watch it week-to-week. i'll probably catch up on a weekend in april but for now, I'm taking every spare chance I have to work on fic. Last chapter of Dearly Departed is gonna be ssssooooooo long and I'm STILL NOT DONE UGH. Anyway, if you enjoyed this info dump and DRAMATIC!Moment, yell at me in the comments XD


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for lots of blood and bullets... extremely minor character death and Astra gets a little sweetly/vicious

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Leah was right.

We went through the whole humiliating, torturous process; she relived every instance of her terror with the nurses, was invaded with sterile instruments and interrogated relentlessly; she was given a case number, a pat on the head, and barely a _goodbye_ when we walked out of the door two hours later. I was unsettled by her treatment but told her not to worry, for what might I know of the humans’ investigative procedures? I’d spent enough time on Earth to know that hanging around any types of city authorities could only lead to trouble for an alien—there were threats of _registries_ and camps, and popular opinion concerning any alien who wasn’t Kal-El vacillated between wary dislike to extreme abhorrence. I would do Leah and the rest of my workers very little good if I were to be discovered and taken in by paranoid police officers.

Thus, I was in no real position to object when I didn’t have a frame of reference for procedure, so I told Leah to remain patient. If Earth’s system was anything like Krypton’s, these things would take time. I told her to return to her dorm, or, if not there, then to my apartment—somewhere she felt safe. She ended up staying with a girlfriend of hers the following week, but hardly said anything to me about the case when she finally came back to work at the shop the following Monday.

The very Monday Leah returned to work found me clocking in on morning shift with her, just to remain on hand at the shop should Drake DeLoser have the audacity to show his face. Thankfully, he did not, and Leah seemed fine if not a little more reserved than usual. She would be returning home to Colorado the following evening, which I was immensely grateful for.

After my morning shift, I went on a date.

I strolled through aisles of mattress displays with Alex at my side at a dealer in the heart of National City. There seemed to be a “Memory Foam Blow-Out Sale!”, in honor of that infernal American holiday in which the pigskin is thrown and people show gratitude for the tryptophan in the turkey: Thanksgiving. I would be closing down the shop Thursday through Saturday to give my team a chance to return home for the holidays, for Leah to recover, and for my own peace of mind; I had poured over Cat’s files on the Sinclair’s company and had spent the better portion of most nights preparing my final laboratory reports and compiling my papers for my fall semester projects.

I was beginning to show signs of exhaustion, so I can only imagine what an undertaking full-time work and graduate school might be for _humans_.

I thought I could distract myself with work and with the fights and with Alex—Rao knows I had enough on my mind with the specter of Kara hovering over me (who did she spend her Thanksgivings with?)—but Leah’s dismissal seemed so careless that I could not release the thoughts. It must have been evident, for Alex soon called attention to my distraction.

“You know, one weekend you tell me we should take it slow, then the next you’re asking me to come mattress shopping with you,” Alex said, as we stopped to eye a bed large enough to take up a fourth of my apartment. “A girl could get mixed signals.”

“Hmm,” I answered, and turned down the next row, shuffling past a crew of children running amok.

One helpless man—who I presumed to be their father—stood snapping and whistling and yelling at the kids, with zero effectiveness. I placed my hand on the top of another mattress and pressed down, yielding to its softness, to the way the imprint of my hand remained long after I had removed it from its surface. Rozz came back to me suddenly; the violent memory of a hardened plank fashioned into a cot with a thin strip of textile and a poorly stitched cover. One did not exactly “shop around” for such goods on Krypton when our mercantiles offered holographic displays of materials for viewing at home—somewhat like a three-dimensional catalogue. I realized while shopping for a mattress why commercialism seemed so foreign to me. It was something of a hobby here on earth, while on Krypton, it wasn’t indicative of status.

However, shopping with friends, or with someone who was perhaps more than a friend… I could see the appeal of having her input.

When I had asked her to accompany me, she seemed surprised at first. Perhaps I was radiating those “mixed signals,” but I had so many other things on my mind that I could hardly add Alex’s supposed inferences to them. She was generous, and eager, and gracious when I squeezed her hand and let it fall, then tucked myself closely by her side as we walked the sidewalks together from the bus stop to the store.

Alex looked beautiful, back-lit by the large window of the storefront, the walls awash with white and upset occasionally by large blue banners with excessive exclamation points and jagged starburst designs. One of the young girls squealed and leapt from one mattress to the next; I thought of young girls, of Kara, Rodisia, of signing a witness sheet when I took Leah to the campus police station. My signature (fake signature), on a report to the Guild, to the National City authorities, perhaps on an invoice from the wholesaler. I needed to order filters, tea sachets, butter pecan, mint and pumpkin spice syrups—Kara was probably twenty-two years old by now—I had a paper due on Alura’s birthday—

“Ashley,” Alex grabbed me by the arm and turned me round to face her. She locked her eyes on mine and stared momentarily, looking for answers she would not find. “What is going on with you?”

“I am sorry,” I said, shaking my head, wondering if such an action would clear the thoughts overrunning every cell in my skull. “There has been an… incident, with one of my workers. I am distracted.”

“I can tell,” Alex answered. “You don’t seem to be too into this.” She waved off toward the bevy of mattresses within the show room, twisting slightly so that the fingers of her left hand brushed the ones on my right. I curled two fingers inexpertly round three of her own, and held tight. I could not say why even now; only that if I didn’t anchor myself to her, my mind would once again be lost. Alex focused me, somewhat, even if the task before me paled in comparison to some of the more pressing actions I needed to take.

“Coffee shop drama, or something?” Alex asked, pulling me down to sit on the mattress. It felt just like the rest of them: plush, serviceable, better than prison. “Just… you can vent if you need to. I never really hear you complain about much of anything…”

And for all that my life had become, however _busy_ it might grow, I knew even then it would never be as painful as what it once had been. My life was difficult in a surprisingly human way, and I soon found myself far more wrapped up in others than I was in myself. I had pushed Kara to the wayside, and had not poured any significant effort into finding her in recent weeks. I was too swept up in M’gann and Roulette, in Leah and Drake-- _Blake_ , my mind self-corrected, in the shop and my studies and Alex’s fingertip running along the life line in my palm—

“One of my workers was hurt,” I confessed, for I had not told Leah’s secret to anyone. I am certain Jeremiah and Connie and Han knew, but I hoped to discuss it more explicitly when we had our “Baristagiving,” as Jeremiah had dubbed it, the Sunday evening following the shop’s holiday closure.

“Hurt? Hurt how?”

“I… do not believe it’s my place to say,” I answered her. I ran a hand through my hair and stared down at my knees, marveling at the ease with which Alex pinpointed my distraction. “I am hoping this short break will be good for her.”

“Good for us all,” Alex groaned in exaggeration.

“Time back with her family, so she can—well, I do not know if one heals from this.”

“Sounds serious.”

“Quite,” I mumbled, and Alex gripped my hand harder.

“Do you… did you want to talk about it?”

“Not really. I do not think she would like me sharing her trauma with a stranger. I’d much rather move on, topic-wise.”

“That’s fair, and, well, I do have something of a favor—more like and invitation, if you want.”

“Yes?”

“So… Thanksgiving,” Alex said, pressing against her knees and standing, trying to move the conversation along. 

“Yes?” I said, standing to follow her.

“You’re taking a pretty long break, missing out on Black Friday shoppers needing their caffeine, you know?”

“The shop is doing well enough. I do not need to keep students here who get such little time to see their family.”

“I thought you might be going…” Alex averted her eyes, and chewed uncertainly on the inside of her jaw. A habit she possesses, even now, when she is about to broach a topic she thinks I will not like to speak of. “…you know. Somewhere.”

“Where would I go?”

“Do you still, uh…” Alex stuffed her hands in the pockets of her jacket and plopped down on another mattress, bouncing back up quickly to her feet. “Not that one,” she said, as we moved on down the aisle. “I uh, if this is a weird question you don’t have to answer—”

“Weird question?”

“A getting-to-know-you-better question when I obviously like you very much kind of question, and don’t want to overstep.”

“That’s a very long descriptor for such an inquiry,” I answered.

“Your family?” Alex asked. “I know you were married but, uh, I guess he’s off the table for Thanksgiving? Metaphorically of course.”

I chuckled, trying to reconcile _Non_ at the head of a table at a human Thanksgiving. I had seen enough of the holiday in the media for the past several years to note that the traditions of extravagant, wasteful cooking and nonsense feetball would not appeal to him in the slightest.

“No, of course not,” I told her. “As I said, it has been many years since I’ve seen him.”

“Do you even know where he is?”

“No,” I said. “I do not much care.”

“Any other family?” she asked, and I could tell it was innocent, was a casual question, but it still stung my heart. Invulnerability was interesting in that way; not once had I experienced pain for my body since I blew out my powers and M’gann found me five—no, was it really seven years ago? Eight? Every hurt I had sustained since that moment had been mental, psychic, emotional. It was one thing to merely feel physical pain, but there was no equivalent for a panging, lonely heart.

I had been taught to withstand torture. Sooner or later, physical hurts are numbed. But memories?

The violence of memories never relents. I was not truly invulnerable, not like I wished I was. 

“No,” I shook my head, placing one hand on another mattress. “I lost them long ago.” I sat down and noted that the mattress was a bit firmer than the rest, which was something I liked. It did not remind me of Rozz, but I likewise did not feel I would be swallowed by stuffing if I rested my weight against it. I lay back on it and felt the material dip beside me, feeling Alex take her seat.

“Do you miss them?”

“Every second,” I said, staring up into a bright white light, the industrial bulbs of the showroom heedless of my losses. Alex lay back beside me and settled eventually. I could feel her lower legs hanging over the side of the mattress, swinging as she gently rocked them back and forth.

“I hate it when Jeremiah checks me out,” she confessed.

“I promise you, Alex, you are not his type.”

“At the _register_ , you jerk,” Alex twisted on her side and nudged my shoulder, her smile fading as quickly as it came. She shifted to lay her hands beneath her head on the flat of the mattress, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. “My father died when I was 15. His name was Jeremiah. And even though they are _nothing_ alike, it’s still weird. Seeing that nametag, hearing _you_ say his name, or my mom, or my sister… like we can just talk about him when he’s not here any more.”

“I am sorry, Alex,” I told her. “I was not close with my father, but a loss that young is…” It was the first I had heard of her father. The first time I had even confessed to losing my family. In that strange mattress moment, I did not recognize it for the step that it was, the mutual revelations of losing the people who shaped us. “Believe me when I say I understand that hurt. Myself, I… have not spoken of my family in many years.”

“Does it make you sad?”

“To speak of them?” Or of Krypton? Or of failure? Of prison? My family and my fate are so inextricably linked it is hard to separate them. “I cannot answer that question, nor can I linger over what I’ve lost. There’s… I have reason to believe there is hope, that I perhaps haven’t lost them all, but I find myself distracted as of late.”

I twisted and placed one hand at Alex’s cheek, drawing my fingers down her jaw line. Her eyes slipped closed and I felt her breath on my wrist in the middle of a mattress store, with one man named Greg in a blue polo shirt trying to look over the cabinet to see what we were doing. He was also trying to sell a mattress to the defeated father of four who gave up on his oldest, Suzanne, when she climbed on top of a bed frame and began screeching that the floor was lava. All of this was happening while other patrons waltzed through the aisles of the store and the sun shone bright overhead in a benign California November. All of this was happening altogether and yet within us both; I lost my twin and my home and Alex lost her father, Jeremiah. I lost them all save Kara, who had not yet returned to me. I lost everything but had my simple shop, and my friendships with my workers, and my history with M’gann, and… and whatever it was I had with Alex.

I had these little, seemingly insignificant interactions that I wanted to remember forever: my fingers walking up and down the bridge of her nose; her grin as we lay there; the way her eyelids wriggled whenever I touched her so lightly it tickled; the way this very public display seemed more intimate than our kisses had almost a week ago.

“I love this one,” I whispered, smiling softly back at her.

“Wh—what?”

“This mattress?” I answered coyly. “Whatever did you think I meant, Alexandra?”

“Ugh, you _nerd_ ,” she muttered, curling up and crawling off the mattress, ripping the tag from the bed post and putting on a valiant effort not to look me in the eye despite her cheeks growing red as the strawberry syrup in my shop.

I rose from my position and accompanied her as we walked the length of the store to the front registers, taking care not to touch each other now that our mattress moment had passed. Even when she handed over the massive tag, I did not feel her skin.

“Because you’re purchasing your mattress on the week of Black Friday, you qualify for free delivery over the holidays,” blue polo told us, and I nodded mechanically while sneaking adoring glances at Alexandra by my side.

I didn’t know then that the next time I would reach out for her would be months from that holiday, after a bitter bout of screaming from the both of us.

In that moment, the possibilities seemed endless. In that moment, I didn’t know how much other parts of my life would affect how she saw me.

“If you’re… I don’t know, lonely or… not lonely,” she began as we exited, and flipped her long torrent of hair over the collar of her leather jacket. “…we always have dinner at my place. Just uh, me and my sister, my mom…I don’t know if you’d want to do the whole big dinner thing on Thursday, but you could come by for leftovers on Friday. Me and my sister usually binge watch Netflix while I get over whatever my mother had to complain about this year.”

“I wouldn’t want to intrude on your traditions,” I insisted.

“No, I—like I said, I don’t think you should meet my mom yet, or anything, but my sister loves your shop. The pumpkin lattes and all. You two should meet, I… I’d like you to meet.”

“Very well, then,” I said, thinking of Friday before us. “And for, for your kindness, I—I mean, it would be nothing of the scale at which I’m sure your family celebrates. But next Sunday? Before classes resume? I’m closing the shop early so my employees can come to my apartment. Six p.m.? I would… it would make me very happy if you would attend, if you are not yet tired of my company.”

“Not yet,” she answered.

Her fingers twitched at her side but my hand was otherwise occupied, clasping the receipt as proof of payment upon delivery. But Alex smiled at me in the sunshine and I needed to hold her; we needed to hold _each other_. So I slipped my arm round her waist and she turned into me at once, rocking in an all-too brief embrace as we waited at the empty bus stop. The crown of her head against my chin, my lips, the underside of my nose, close enough for me to drop a kiss, close enough for me to imagine all the different ways I could hold her. She smelled like my coffee and leather and the sterility of the lab, but felt so soft in my hands. I squeezed her against my side, as if that pressure would prevent this world from ever daring to take her from me, as if she did not have the autonomy to break away of her own accord.

I had lost so many people since Krypton, but here I was again: falling deeply and faster than lightspeed, disregarding any lessons I might have learned from failed loves of the past. It was dangerous, my attraction, my complete infatuation with her. I had fawned over her most recent report detailing the mutation process of human cells when exposed to certain forms of radiation, when cross-bred with strains of DNA that completely altered the genetic make-up of human bodies.

She was so _smart_ , and I loved her for it.

She was so terribly smart, that it would be our undoing.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Cat Grant showed up to my shop at 8:32 a.m. Wednesday morning and apparently, that was cause for two of my workers to drop a steam pot full of 2% and an entire tray of scones. Thank Rao Connie had actually prepped each one with the cling-wrap to preserve freshness, or else it would’ve been a batch wasted.

Alex was also there, wearing the slouchy grey beanie hat I’d gifted her months ago. It had been… quite a while, actually, since I’d first met Alex. When she’d just been another human student in the back of the coffee shop, lost in her books. All that time ago, before we’d danced, before we’d practically decimated a produce stand, before she’d kissed me, almost like I deserved it… before she’d invited me to a Thanksgiving post-holiday celebration, invited me to meet her _sister_ , with whom she was so very close.

I can scarcely remember a time on this planet when Alex was not a part of me. There was Krypton, and then there was Alex. My time in between the two was negligible at best, so much so that I seemed to divide myself even further than I already was. A twin split by space and time, delineating my existence between then, with the people I knew and loved, and now, with the people I know and love so very deeply.

Most of the students had already left campus for the holidays. Alex was from a small town up the California coast called Midvale, but this was the third year that her mother had come down to share the holiday with her, since her sister was likewise attending the same school. Aside from the handful of local early-risers camped out on the couches in back with their earbuds and laptops, the shop was relatively unoccupied.

But having Cat Grant show up anywhere must have been, as the humans say, a _big deal_. Between my workers and Alex and the aftermath of Cat’s visit—the shattered glass and police cars and everything in between—well, perhaps I had underestimated just how much influence Kitty-Cat possessed.

Jeremiah’s jaw hung open the entire time she spoke at the counter, tapping away on her smartphone. Her private car was parked in the loading zone, still running, but she hardly seemed to care.

“I need a triple-shot medium latte with skim milk,” Cat commanded. “And I will know with a certainty if you use any dairy with a higher fat content—Anthony Bourdain _is_ a bit of a windbag, but I’ve never learned more from a chef. Now, chop chop. Astra,” she called, and I gave as discreet a head shake I could while Connie and Jeremiah busied themselves with preparing the best latte to ever pass Cat Grant’s acerbic lips. “A word?”

“She never gets my name right,” I told Alex, removing my apron as I stepped back from behind the counter. “Excuse me.”

“Wait… you know Cat Grant?”

“It… was quite by accident,” I said, wracking my brain, wondering what lie might be plausible enough to make Alex believe Cat Grant would know exactly where my shop was. And to call me by my real name…even though Alex doesn’t know my real name… so to call me by the wrong real name…

I was beginning to confuse myself.

Cat Grant removed her overlarge black sunglasses from the top of her head and plopped them right down on the bridge of her nose. “Perhaps outside? Bring my latte when it’s done.” She turned and clicked away in shoes that added another three inches to her height, though she was still shorter than me.

“Ashley—”

“Do not worry, Alex,” I insisted, backpedaling from her spot at the bar. “I’ll just be a moment.”

I sped after Cat, who had taken up position near the front tier of cement blocks where the track of the retractable door had been installed. The door was down that morning to account for the slightly cooler November temperatures. I had hoped it would make eavesdropping difficult, though Jeremiah, Alex, and Connie were all staring directly out the window at the pair of us.

“That boy behind the register looks like he would faint if I offered to take a selfie,” Cat snipped, typing away on her phone.

“Are you going to—”

“I don’t do _selfies_ ,” Cat insisted. “Follow CatCo’s Insta and you might catch a glimpse of me, but I keep my account private.”

“What do you want, Cat?”

“I don’t know why you’re the one sounding exasperated,” she propped one cocky hand on her hip and finally looked up from her phone. “I’m the one who keeps getting invited to alien cage matches. Not by Roulette this time, but my circles... honestly, some rich people have far too much time on their hands.”

“She has announced the date for another one already?” I asked, dipping my head closer, as if it might keep wandering ears from hearing. As if the inch thick glass and plaster to my right would do any good. “Really? Has Roulette made another move against you?”

“The only moves being made are the match locations,” Cat said. “I got a call from a contact in London. This show’s going on tour, it seems.”

“What does that mean?”

“There’s one more match here, the first weekend in December,” Cat explained. “Then, she takes off round the world. You can’t think that ours is the only country with poor opinions of aliens?”

Before she could launch into her breakdown of Roulette’s venture, Jeremiah emerged from the shop holding Cat’s latte, hand shaking so severely it was a wonder he did not spill the drink.

“Thank you, Jeremiah,” I said, quickly removing the drink so that his compromised motor skills wouldn’t damage Kitty-Cat’s prim ensemble. “You know, Cat here was just saying how much she’d love to get a photo with someone from the shop.”

“Really?!”

Cat gave me one of her best glares, one I’d only ever seen leveled at Roulette in the warehouse the first night we met.

“She loves supporting local businesses.” Which was true; I had heard as much on KCAT radio.

“It would be an honor, Ms. Grant,” Jeremiah’s smile grew so large I was certain it would run off his face. “I’m doing a photography minor, and your shoots for the magazine and _Cuisine_ are just… the detail in those pictures is… and then _you_ always look—”

“Yes, well, thank you very much,” Cat quipped. “I’m afraid I don’t have much time, so we should take this quickly.”

“Right away!” Jeremiah said, stepping up to Cat’s side.

The pair were night and day, him tall, dark, and smiley, her petite, fair, surly. With her big sunglasses on and the reluctant grin on her face, one could hardly tell who she was—though I had little doubt Jeremiah would tag every friend in his digitized social sphere to the photograph (which did feature the Brigadier’s Brewers sign rather prominently. I am no photographer, but Alex has introduced me to some of the finer points of taking pictures together on her phone in Earth’s _selfie_ culture). Either way, it served the dual purpose of grating on Kitty-Cat’s nerves, and affording my shop some well-deserved publicity. Jeremiah would likewise be on cloud nine for the rest of the week.

“Thank you sooooooooo much Ms. Grant, and seriously, if you like ever, _ever_ want a special coffee, I would be able to—”

“That’s enough, Jeremiah,” I told him gently, handing Cat her latte.

“Yes, uhm, thank you Jerry,” Cat said, arching one skeptical eyebrow in my direction as Jeremiah retreated back into the shop. I caught Alex’s worried glance and tried for a reassuring smile, despite the news of Roulette’s newest fight churning unpleasantly in my gut.

“Was that really necessary?”

“No, but you’ve certainly made him happy.”

“Not my job,” Cat said.

“I disagree. Whether you intend to do so or not, your articles slant far more optimistically than those produced by other outlets.”

“It’s within brand.”

“It’s _sentimental_ , and you are more transparent than you like to think. Even the first draft of your story on Roulette has that entire section on the proposed amnesty bill.”

“Which will be tied up in Congress from here until eternity unless some big pro-alien story stirs public opinion and forces the representatives to take a vote.”

“I assume that story involves mine and M’gann’s participation in forthcoming fights?”

“At least in the next one,” Cat nodded, taking a sip of her latte, pausing, then taking another. “This… is not terrible.”

“I know.”

“It’s not hot enough, though.”

“Come round here,” I insisted, motioning toward the side alley so that we would no longer be hiding behind her private car parked in the loading zone. “I can take care of that for you.” Once I removed the lid, it did not take long for my laser vision to have the milk bubbling at undrinkable degrees, which seemed perfectly suited to Cat Grant’s palette. 

“Hmm,” Cat said, taking another sip. “Yes, well, thank you. As to Veronica, she has to get one more fight in before we ring in 2014.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“It seems that even Veronica is not exempt from the elaborate gymnastics it takes to organize events on a holiday calendar.”

“What are you talking about?”

Cat sighed grievously, as if I were asking a question whose answer was painfully evident.

“Rich people throw rich parties,” Cat snipped. “And though the cage matches offer some variety, so does a Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga Holiday Benefit. Hartfield booked them for the second weekend in December—they seem to think the pair are going to do an album. Then there’s the obligatory company parties, and the final weekend before the holidays, the big event at Lord Technologies—do you know Maxwell?—he’s been experimenting with some fancy light bulb or light saber or laser or something… either way, it makes for a shiny show that offers competition for Veronica. All the people who usually attend the alien bouts have too many other commitments this time of year.”

“Well, at least now we know their operation is mobile.”

“That was always in the cards,” Cat corrected me. “At least, from my research… you said you had a chance to look over my report, correct?”

“Yes, it is extensive,” I answered, thinking back to my numerous briefings as lieutenant, captain, brigadier leader, and eventually general. “It was… rather more loquacious than most military reports—”

“I am not a soldier,” Cat reminded me, as if I could forget when she tapped her impatient fingers against the waist of her camel-colored pencil skirt.

“Regardless, if Roulette is holding another event, we must move. Or at least, M’gann and I,” I answered, narrowing my brows as I took in our surroundings.

I cannot pinpoint exactly when I felt the disturbance, only that something in the air shifted, and it felt like the calm before battle.

“Would you return to the warehouse?" I asked. "Or wherever she decides to hold the next bout?”

“I think Veronica is all talk and very little follow-through,” Cat answered, crossing her arms over her chest, tucking her phone underneath her armpit. “Then again, I don’t feel like I’ve come out of headquarters for almost two weeks… Carter’s been at his dad’s since the seventh, but he and I will be going to Metropolis for Thanks—”

“Cat, get down!” I shouted, for I heard the echo of a bullet rattling through the chamber the instant the SUV turned round the corner.

And not just one bullet, but twenty-three, the line of them embedded in the concrete and shattering the glass of the windows on the retractable door, the glass of Cat’s private car, denting the lamp post and the trash can twenty feet down the street, thankfully sailing overhead (and two glancing off my shoulder) to lodge in the brick walls of the alley where we stood. Or fell, rather. My body shielding Cat’s as the bullets rained, as the screech of tires and the burning scent of rubber ignited my battle senses like a match to a cigarette. I needed a single drag off the battle offensive, of retribution, of bloodshed, and I would be sated. For Cat was trembling beneath me and I knew nothing of her driver in the car—bullets pinged through the thin metal of the doors and I wondered if I could stop myself from wreaking righteous havoc against the perpetrators.

All of this I heard in less than ten seconds, holding Cat beneath me as she shut her eyes, breathing rapidly into my neck. “Cat, Cat…” I tried, but she kept her eyes closed and clung to me all the tighter. “Cat… Cat stay down…get behind here…”

After maneuvering Cat behind some debris in the alley I was up, sprinting, running after the car until I had the make, model, and plates memorized. I was intent on grasping hold of the bumper and hurling the vehicle into the ocean until I remembered….

Cat in the alley. The driver in the black car. Connie, Jeremiah, in the shop… _Alex_.

Alex at her bar stool in front of all those fragile, shattering glass windows.

And the _bullets._

Twenty-three of them.

Bullets that rip through rib cages and mutilate the fascia encasing the ventricles, shred the aorta and send burbling spouts of expectorated blood up the windpipe, the esophagus—blood on my face and my uniform when Rodisia coughed up what remained of her heart after the sniper hit her squarely between the shoulder blades.

_ALEX!_

Speeding back to the shop like an electric current and the moment distilled before me—the scene of Jeremiah covering Connie, who had been right in the middle of preparing a drink. The steam wand was screaming and misty clouds were puffing over their shaking forms as they huddled together on the floor. Three patrons—one cowering, clutching the handle of the door in the restroom, the other two relocated behind an overturned couch, glass _everywhere_ …

Cat?

Alex?

“Is anyone injured?” I shouted, crunching over the glass in my tennis shoes, and then floating (which I should’ve done in the first place) for speed, and to save the soles of the shoes.

“Connie?” I asked, and heard her scrabbling about, accompanied by the clatter of the steam pot and slush of milk as it spilled across the floor. “Jeremiah! Connie!”

“Here, Ashley! We’re alright,” Connie announced, crawling to her feet and pulling herself up over the counter. Jeremiah was behind her, face drawn and clearly shaken, eyes wider than I’ve ever seen them. Trembling.

“Okay, okay, good, where’s… where’s—”

“Outside,” Connie answered the question I couldn’t seem to finish. “She knew you were outside and she went running—”

And so I did the same.

“ALEX!” I yelled, turning back to the alley to find… no Cat Grant. “Cat? Cat, where did you—Alex!”

A high-pitched whistle pierced the air and I saw Cat Grant, or at least the back of her, protruding from the passenger’s side of her car, heels dangling slightly out the open door. Her top half emerged from the car and I saw blood, thick, dark stains, running over the bulk of her shirt.

“Astra!” she called, and I hurried over, grimacing at the sight.

Alex had her fingers _inside_ the neck of Cat’s driver, and her left hand held a shop rag round the invasion, sopping up the purple-dark liquid. Cat was on the left pressing against another exit wound in his gut, and I had turned round before I finished counting the bullet holes in his body.

“Connie!” I shouted. “Call an ambulance!”

I’m certain that’s what she was doing, holding the phone closely to her ear, murmuring uncertainly while she pat Jeremiah on the back. He was sitting in one of the fold-out chairs we keep behind the counter with his head between his legs, breathing heavily.

I vaulted over the front of the bullet-riddled car and Alex made room for me.

“Can’t move my hand, I’ve got his carotid,” Alex mumbled, just as a spurt of blood escaped to splatter us both. “Entry wound on the abdomen, need a compress—”

I located the wound that Cat was pressing against on the man’s opposite side and yanked my black shop shirt off, balled it up, and pressed it against his side. The blood had already begun to sink through to my tank top underneath, and it began running in streams through my fingers the harder I pressed. The poor driver’s eyes were hazy but alert—he knew he was going to die, but he was not prepared. He clenched his jaw and made grotesque gurgling sounds, shifted in his seat and flailed about at his hip to release the safety belt. Another 30 seconds passed and I heard sirens in the distance, which meant Cat and Alex would hear them in another two minutes. Eventually, he lost too much blood to move, so there was very little squirming. He was easily 220 pounds that Cat couldn’t move if she tried. And Alex, well, she might have moved him, but not without killing him instantly by releasing the pressure on his neck. I had seen similar injuries in the field too many times, and no matter how quick the medics were, it would be too late. We all seemed to know it, the driver included. His jaw went slack when Alex turned her head, listening for the shrill screams of the ambulance down the block.

“Alex,” I said, hoping to pull her out of her own head. She kept her hand clenched, she didn’t blink, and if she ground any harder against her teeth they would shatter. “Alex, let go, okay?”

“He was just parked here…”

“Alex, we need to get out of the road.”

“He wasn’t even _doing_ anything, Ashley—”

“Let go, Alex,” I urged her, and she did eventually.

And the ambulance did come, eventually.

And they made the call that eventually, inevitably, always comes after incidents like this.

DOA.

And I never said so in the moment, but with that amount of damage, perhaps letting him bleed out would’ve been a mercy. I urged Alex and Cat both back inside when I heard the _other_ sirens, the police, and hoped beyond hope that I could keep my head down. Cat quickly gave her statement before another large black SUV pulled up. Two men twice my size, wearing Kevlar vests and sporting twin black sidearms, introduced themselves as security servicemen for hire.

“They’re good people,” Cat mumbled back at me, clearly shaken, the blood of her driver caked along her neck. “They do CatCo corporate events, and… it’s okay. I should go.”

I moved away from Alex and Connie, who were both staring absently at the wall where my windows had once been. Light streamed in and the breeze blew through the open space; I can hardly imagine what more damage the bullets would’ve done—or who they might have hit—if I’d had the door pulled up for the day.

“This is the first time you’ve been out in two weeks? Should you really be—”

“I meant… _out_ out,” Cat insisted. “I only ever really go from my house to CatCo, and some nights I stay at the CatCo Building, especially if Carter's not home. But I thought with Thanksgiving… with the holiday…”

“Should I come check on you later?”

“No, not while I have these men on the payroll,” Cat said, motioning toward the large specimens doing a fairly good job of reconnaissance. They stationed themselves where they had the best vantage, and had already determined that the alley exit was locked. Decent enough people to protect Cat and honestly, I had others to attend to.

“I know you are shaken, and rightfully so,” I began, walking by her side until we reached the car—the metal of the vehicle much denser than that of the private car swarming with police and crime scene investigators. “But I am even more certain of my conviction. Roulette will be defeated, and we will see justice done for this.”

“You know… I didn’t event know his name,” Cat confessed, climbing swiftly into the back of the SUV. It was more of a tank, truly, judging from all the gear hidden away in the secret compartments. I didn’t like her leaving, but I couldn’t keep an eye on her and the shop…

“It’s… it is not alright, there is nothing alright about this,” I told her. “But it is something we can remedy. Do not let a counter-attack with casualties dissuade you from the objective.”

Cat Grant turned to me then, and I expected something snide. But it never came. She simply stared at me for a long time, as if trying to pinpoint what made me special. I look human, I _acted_ human, and, I suppose, it was with bitter resignation that Cat Grant accepted me as some piece to a larger plan that she had very little control over.

“Bullets bounced right off of you,” she whispered. “If I hadn’t been standing right next to you—”

“Do not go there, Cat,” I said. “Take it from someone who knows too much about how lethal proximity can be in situations like this.”

She nodded tersely but didn’t lean back against the seat (I imagine so as not to stain the fabric too much). I shut the door, but didn’t tell her I’d be checking in on her… every day if I had to. She had a son—Carter—and I knew he had rushed to the forefront of her mind, just as thoughts of Jeremiah and Connie and Alex had called me back from enacting my violent retribution.

When I returned to them, Connie had already started sweeping up the glass.

“Don’t, Connie,” I insisted, taking the broom from her. “It can wait.”

“I just… I think I need something to do.”

“Go home, if you feel up to it,” I advised her, scanning the area for Jeremiah next. He still had his head down between his legs in that chair behind the bar, but his breathing had thankfully leveled out. “You’ve given your statement, correct?”

“Yeah…”

“Then go home,” I said. “See that Jeremiah makes it, as well. You’re both driving north tomorrow, correct?”

“Yeah, but… I might just go tonight. I feel like I need people after that.”

“How far?”

“About seventy-five miles. Once I make it to the Interstate, smooth sailing.”

“Be careful,” I said. “Take… take all the time you need.”

“Yeah,” Connie chuckled humorlessly. “And I already thought the day couldn’t get any worse.”

“What?” I asked. “What do you mean ‘worse’?”

“I mean… this whole thing is just—it’s just _shitty_ , Ashley, but you know, I’m fine. Jeremiah’s fine. You’re, well, thank God you’re okay. You were outside and—and… I just wasn’t sure for a second there. But to top it all off, I never got to tell you about Blake.”

Something hit me very deeply when Connie said his name. Something I had fought with for a long time. Something that had melted, but now, was slowly solidifying at the mention of a criminal's name.

“What is it, Connie?”

“There was a reprimand issued by the student board, but they’re not going to trial.”

“A reprimand?” I repeated.

“It’s not even… it means nothing, Ashley. He’s still starting in December. The case is going to get buried, and Leah’s going to feel even worse when she gets back. Add this to the mix,” Connie gestured grandly to the shop. Thankfully, the damage was mostly contained to the front. A bullet or several lodged in the walls, and one airpress that had exploded from a ricochet. And glass. Glass everywhere. “…and I can’t think of any other way to describe it. It’s a shit-show.”

I wiped at my eyelid and wondered how bloody I looked. How disgusting. I wondered if I looked half as bad as Alex, who I’d sent up to my apartment shortly after she gave her statement so she could shower. Cat had a lot of blood on her. I had streams of blood on my hands, some on my shirt, my collar.

Alex… Alex was _saturated_ with it.

“Yes,” I agreed, wondering what could be done about Blake, wondering what could be done about Cat, about my storefront, about Alex’s pile of bloody clothes at the entrance to my apartment. “Go,” I finally settled on. “They’re putting police tape up, now, and have assured me there will be a patrol stationed at the corner until I can call for replacement window panes.”

“Do it today,” she insisted, checking the clock. It was not yet 10 a.m., but it felt as if hours had passed since Jeremiah took his innocent selfie with the queen of all media. “Everywhere else will be closed tomorrow.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” I answered. “I don’t mean to be… I don’t want to push, but should I go with you two? To see you home?”

“No, that’s not necessary,” Connie offered me an understanding smile. “But I would go talk to Alex. You didn’t see her when the first shot went off… when she thought you’d… well, you know.”

“Yes,” I nodded solemnly. “I do.”

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

Thirty minutes later I emerged from the shower and began toweling off my hair. My shower came after a drawn-out conversation on the shop phone with the hardware store that said yes, they could come and board up my windows to keep intruders out, but the glass panes were custom cut… there wasn’t any way to have them installed before Saturday, at the earliest, on account of the holiday.

Connie called the shop to tell me that she made it to her dorm, and Jeremiah called when he made it back to his apartment. I wished I’d had the foresight to ask for a call from Cat Grant, but I doubted she would’ve talked to anyone except Carter that day, no matter what kind of work she had before her employees were given two days' holiday leave. But they all called and eased my mind enough that I could peel the bloodied shirt from my body and add it to the trash bag Alex had pulled out from beneath my sink. She’d helped herself to some of my clothes and had been sitting on my couch for the better part of an hour, leaning back against the arm rest with her eyes shut.

My hair had curled to tight, wet ringlets that I tried to wring out as best I could. Her hair was wet as well, but she didn't seem bothered by leaving a large wet spot on the fabric. I didn’t blame her, really, with what she’d seen. I put the kettle on and made my way closer to her, sitting down and keeping my space, until she opened her eyes.

“You should’ve died,” she said, sitting up rather abruptly once I joined her. “You should’ve… did you count them? The bullets?”

“Twenty-three.”

“You should’ve died.”

Another clue, in that moment, that I did not recognize. One more piece of kindling to add to the flame that would become our argument. She gave me opening after opening in the following conversation, and I lied each time. I lied, and she knew I was lying, and all the while I thought I was comforting her, I was thoroughly breaking her heart.

“Ashley?”

“Yes?”

“Not… Astra?”

“What?” I bluffed, curling my fingernails into the soft grey sweatpants covering my knees. “No, that was… that just Cat being—”

“Cat?” she finished for me. “You know Cat Grant.”

“Yes, it’s… not something I’d like to get into now,” I told her, which was true. The closest to honest I could be.

“Those bullets went right through the alley,” she said. “You had just gone that way, I saw them embedded all the way down in the wall, but then, brick rubble, to the side—”

“Alex, what are you talking about? You’ve just… you’re _shaken_ , that’s the problem. You just saw a man die, and it’s not easy, I know it’s not—”

“Do you?” she turned to me. “Do you know… I… you walked that way and I heard shots and you—Ashley, I couldn’t _see_ you, and then you disappeared. Cat Grant was lying on the ground and their were two bullets lodged in the brick right beside her. It looked like… like… like a ricochet, or something…”

“Alex, trying to make sense of tragedy will drive you mad,” I said. A comfort. A distraction.

A manipulation.

“Ashley.”

“Yes?”

“ _Ashley_.”

“Alex, what—?”

She moved, suddenly, pressed me back so that I was half-leaning and half lying on my end of the sofa, her right leg propped up on the cushion, her hand on my shoulder, another on my abdomen, pressing me down, almost testing that pressure… for what, I couldn’t determine at the time. She stared down at me and I had nothing for her, no explanations, no decent reasons for my escape. I was alive and I shouldn’t have been, not if I were human. I was alive and Alex was alive and we were alone together, clean and broken in my tiny apartment.

She traced my eyebrows with her fingertip, as I had traced her nose only a few days ago at the mattress store. Had it only been a few days ago?

She simply _looked_ at me, for minutes on end it seemed, though it could not have taken as long as I thought. The kettle eventually sounded and I shuffled out from underneath her. She followed, but I had nothing to say. I set about making coffee, splashing the hot water over two sets of mugs, of coffee grounds, of pour-over filters. It was mechanical, and I didn’t have to answer questions. Alex moved into me from behind and slipped her arms around my waist. I set the kettle aside and bowed my head, wondering why things felt so final with her.

“Why did it have to be you?” she whispered, but I didn’t answer the question. I didn’t really know what she was asking, but it all became clear eventually.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

Once Alex left my apartment, I dove into research concerning Leah’s case. I followed its progress with the same single-mindedness I used when studying off-world enemy movements. But, just as Connie said, everything was tucked neatly away in a cabinet at the campus police station. No charges were filed, and I saw not one word of the accusations printed in the campus, local, or state press. There was a blurb on one of the gossip social feeds about DeLaurier’s Debauchery, but nothing substantial. Nothing that would see him pay for what he did.

Drake or Blake—or whatever his name was—his “situation” was explained to me by the chief of campus police; he’d come to talk with me about two weeks ago, back when I had accompanied Leah to her examination. As I looked through the walls of the campus clinic to check in on Leah’s progress, he had droned on about college lifestyles, about provocative clothing and alcohol and things that were so out of touch with Leah that it took all of me not to backhand the man across the jaw. I sat there silently as he talked, as I watched the nurse’s latex glove disappear underneath the sterile curtain draped over Leah’s lap, her legs spread like an animal undergoing some barbaric sterilization procedure. The chief kept trying to draw my attention away from her, but his explanation was meaningless. For all his carefully crafted statements and rhetoric I knew that the university valued the revenue brought in from trivial sports games with talented athletes more than they valued the healthy spirit of one of their brightest mathematics majors.

The injustice boiled within me, and it overflowed after the senseless violence I had seen at the shooting. It caused Connie and Jeremiah distress, and gave Cat Grant’s hardened nature its own severe beating. It altered something within Alex. And so, I did something I had not done in quite a long while.

I got violent.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

“Drake, you will tell the police that you broke your arm when you fell down the stairs,” I told him, standing outside of the athletics center Wednesday evening. So close to the Thanksgiving holiday, but I nor Leah had much to feel thankful for. Perhaps I was thankful for the abandoned campus, free of foot traffic, because it made my mission that night so much easier.

Even though he had stopped going to Leah for academic help, he was, apparently, a complete idiot, for he was still mandated extra study hall beyond what was required for most athletes on the campus. I knew, because I had started following him after Leah first confessed to me. I had researched his movements. Done preliminary recon, which I had missed, and found myself reveling in the covert sense of mission while I was about it. There was an objective, and a target, and a timeline. I wanted justice, even if it did not align with human laws. I was glad of my preparation, that I knew where he would be alone, and when he would be alone. I never set out to do this, but all at once, I knew I could.

We will call it _universal justice._

“Listen lady, my name is _Blake_. And you’re insane,” Blake threw back at me, trying to jerk away from my grip.

He could not.

I was shorter and slimmer, so it must’ve startled him that he could not shirk loose my grip; I saw the whites of his eyes gleam with fear beneath the campus streetlight.

“I _said_ ,” I repeated, securing my hat in place, as well as the swath of cloth covering my nose and mouth, “that you will tell the police you broke your arm when you fell down the stairs.”

“But I didn’t fall down the—”

I tossed him down the concrete steps that led up to the athletics building. I used more force than I likely should have, but he was a large man, stout, a _post_ for the foot-basket-net-base-soccer-ball that he plays. One who, according to his web traffic, _goes hard in the paint._

I couldn’t care less.

I reached the bottom of the stairs by the time he rolled to a stop beneath my boot, my black Kryptonian suit affording me the flexibility and agility I once prioritized in battle. Is it wrong to say I felt enervated, dispensing my own justice that I knew would not be dolled out by the human authorities? That after that day, as tragic and haphazard as it all seemed, it finally felt good to reclaim a bit of control?

Blake Delaurier. Star power forward for the UCNC Rangers. He raped Leah.

And I wanted to kill him.

“Uhhnnnggh,” Blake groaned, rolling on his side at the bottom of the outdoor steps. I’d counted them myself, three times; the first set of stairs to the landing had thirty-two concrete steps etched into the hill, and then there were another seventeen that led down to the street. It was a steep, manmade incline, meant to make the complex where all the university athletes ate and studied and exercised look somewhat imposing.

All I saw was sanctuary for criminals who did not deserve grace.

I gave him a quick kick to the gut, and he flopped back in a supine position.

“Bitch!” he spat at me, and I dodged his collected mouthful of saliva and blood with such speed his eyes blinked disbelievingly. I swore at him in Kryptonian, and kicked again. He groaned and curled up, all six-foot-seven of him, shaking on the sidewalk.

“How is your arm?” I asked him.

“Not broken,” he raged, swinging widely and clumsily in my direction. “Even after you _threw me_ —”

“I believe you misunderstood,” I told him calmly. “I said, you will tell the police you broke your arm when you fell down the stairs.”

“But you _pushed_ me. And I didn’t break my—oh, no please, please don’t!!!”

The _snap_ of his humerus was one of the more satisfying sounds I’d heard since arriving on the planet; as were the sickening whimpers and cries he uttered when I stomped on his other hand’s fingers, grinding them in to the sidewalk below; it ruined any chance of him returning to the court to handle some sort of inflated ball, which was the objective from the start.

“You will have a difficult time touching another woman again, without the use of your arms or fingers, wouldn’t you say?” I muttered. “And you won’t be tossing around your sport ball any time soon.”

I left shortly after, whooshing into the night and feeling elated as I returned to the shop. I made a round past CatCo and did lay eyes on Cat Grant, curled up on a sofa, a mop of curly brown hair sitting beside her. There were two SUVs parked in the garage I’d never noted before, but they were the same make as the security firm’s vehicle from that morning. There were also three men patrolling floors above and below her, and two stationed outside her door. I was glad that she had the means to protect herself. If we truly wanted to undermine Roulette’s organization, we would have to expect retaliation.

Is it sad to say I found that prospect thrilling?

That I was…how does Alexandra put it?

_Ready to kick some ass._

Another stop on the sidewalk, another fissure running through the concrete, and yet another reminder of my power. What do you suppose it’s like, human? To suddenly feel all-powerful, to be a god amongst men? To dispense justice in the wake of oversight, high on accomplishment, unable to see through the blinding haze of my own personal satisfaction?

Blake paid, and it was satisfying.

In light of everything that had happened over the past three weeks, I dare say I was _thankful_ for it.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OMG THIS CHAPTER WAS SO LONGGGGGGGG
> 
> the middle part at the shop just kept growing and growing and I still don't even feel like I properly resolved that scene but boy did i have to because PLOT is still happening and I'll be darned if i don't post once a week for y'all. 
> 
> next chpater they're gonna start yelling at each other guys i'm probably gonna cry writing it it's gonna b GR8T
> 
> sry i haven't replied ot comments yet real lyf AGAIN like WHY CANT IT JUST SLOW DOWN A HOT SECOND AND LET ME ENJOY WRITING GUH... i'm gonna get on it, i swear. Also, to the person who went through and commented all the way through on my Gen Danvers Beauty and the Beast Au... you're a freaking rock star and that was very timely.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so... tw for serious emotional manipulation???

Alex Danvers looked like shit.

It was unavoidable, really, working in food service, that I would soon enough pick up on human swears. _To look like shit_ means to look haggard, worn, exhausted, the haze of hangover and drunken mistakes reflected in the visage of the poor soul unlucky enough to stumble to standing in the waking hours. It happened, more often than not, with college students working morning shifts at a coffee shop.

“ _Damn_ , Connie. You look like _shit_.”

Jeremiah’s perpetual refrain rang in my ears as I stood with the coffee in hand, half a dozen scones, and Alex’s favored roast already ground as she opened the door to her apartment Friday morning. She took one look at me and I at her, and we both grimaced.

“You look like shit,” I said, not unkindly, but by way of observation.

Alex stood in a grey, oversized UCNC t-shirt, block letters emblazoned across her chest. It washed her out, highlighting her pale, haggard appearance, the gaunt sink of her cheeks, the chaffing cracks at her upper lip, the veiny red crackle of dryness in her hollow, fatigued eyes. Her hair was tangled and makeup was smudged near her eyebrow, as if she hadn't taken the time to wash her face the previous evening.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I… was invited?” I replied, holding the breakfast aloft. What I had hoped would be a pleasant surprise on my part was slowly turning into a peace offering. Not that I knew I would need it.

“I don’t remem—oh, Monday,” Alex muttered, holding tight to the door handle as I stood awkwardly in the hallway of her apartment. “How did you—how do you know where I live?”

“You told me, Alex,” I continued, still confused, but that confusion was quickly snowballing into worry. I felt terribly out of place, clutching uncertainly at the food in one hand, the hot cup of coffee in the other. Inside the pack I had strapped to my back was a present, a French Press and an electric grinder… looking back, I knew I was very much trying to impress Alex’s family, even though I had no idea she knew family of my own.

“When?” Alex demanded.

“I cannot recall. Almost six months ago, perhaps? You talked about moving out of the dorms to this new place once your stipend increased.”

“How did you remember that?”

“Why are you— _you_ invited _me_ ,” I reminded her, taking a step closer.

“Stop,” she said, her knuckles gripping all the harder on the doorknob.

I wanted to reach out to her, to take her hand, but mine were loaded down with the little gifts I’d hoped she would like. That her sister would like, so that she would like me, so that I would feel less guilty about liking Alex as much as I did. But something was wrong. Something was very, _very_ wrong. I could hear the low rumble of newscasters from Alex’s television, could make out two bottles—one empty, sitting atop the island—and then, when I looked through the walls, one half-full because it had been overturned, spilling onto the carpet beside the rumpled couch. There was a threadbare blanket, and jeans discarded in a puddle off to the side of the sitting area. Tupperware containers of half-eaten leftovers were spread atop the coffee table. A wastebasket, with a reused plastic bag from the all-purpose store on campus reeked of vomit, and was placed only a foot away from the head of the couch.

Alex was hungover.

Alex was mad, and hungover, and eyeing me like I was some sort of viper ready to strike in her weakened state.

She rubbed the heel of her hand in her eye socket and I moved to place the scones down.

“Alex, what’s wrong?”

“You need to go,” she murmured. “I can’t do this today.”

“What is it?” I pressed, thinking of our week, a blissful Monday, the shooting on Wednesday, and now, Friday, the end after the holidays when we were supposed to watch her Netflix options and I was supposed to meet her sister, when I was going to… to ask her if she would like to spend any of her Christmas break with me, near the ocean, when I was going to tell her that I was falling in love—

“I just…” she looked as if she might cry, though that might have been the red at her eyes, the scratchy, sandpaper feel that I knew well after I’d taken to drink on off-world missions gone awry. “Please,” she said, looking as if you wanted to reach for me, looking as if she wanted to shove me away. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“Who’s here?” I asked, feeling my hackles rise, wondering, suddenly, if Alex was in danger. If she was _afraid_.

Later that evening, I would realize she was afraid. She was terrified. Scared, frightened, worried… of me.

Alex was afraid of me.

“No one, no one’s here,” she said, sniffling against the crook of her elbow.

“Alex…” I tried, gently, fearfully, for I had seen her in many states before, but even when she didn’t turn her work in on time, even when she was holding Cat's driver’s arteries together with her fingers, she never looked this _broken_. “Alex, I cannot… please help me understand,” I whispered. I shifted the coffee into the crook of my opposite arm, and slowly, carefully, reached for her. She did not withdraw, did not flinch. Her head fell against the side of the door and I saw her knuckles grip around the edges of the wood. I watched as her eyes fell closed as I touched her jaw, as I ran my fingers down the slope of clammy skin. “Let me help you,” I whispered.

I could see the force behind the muscles in her eyelids as she kept them tightly closed, refusing to look at me. I noted the way her face pinched together as she took two deep breaths, as her lower jaw quivered beneath my touch. I thought of how serene she looked Monday, how, beneath my fingertips, I did not feel the reverberations of worry, the heaviness of her soul. I felt all the possibilities between us swell until I could scarcely contain it. I felt… I felt the desperate need for that mattress to be taken back to my apartment at once, so that Alex and I might lie on it together, whispering secrets to each other, tracing bones and burrowing into each other’s bodies.

“You know,” she began, finally opening her eyes, and what I saw there unnerved me even more than the brokenness. It wasn’t an emotion I’d ever seen directed at me, not from Alex, anyway, which is why it took me so long to place it.

Hatred.

Unmitigated, blinding, loathsome disdain.

“Come in, then,” she said, sliding the door open and shuffling out of the way so that I could enter her apartment.

On first glance, it looked similar to my own, though far more spacious. Somewhat bare, save for a surfboard propped by the far window, a handful of family pictures, bookshelves, two of them, a clothes rack, unwashed cutlery and a pot with congealed oils and stagnant water abandoned in the sink. Lots of brick. Lots of light. One rug, hardwood floors—I wondered how chilled Alex’s feet might be, how cool her legs might feel… I had never seen her in any state of undress, not as she was here, with her sleeves pushed up and a steel set to her eyes, her feet planted shoulder-width apart, as if she were prepared to take a blow from me.

“Have you seen the news?” she began.

Which, admittedly, is not what I expected given the initial hostile reception. I set about cleaning the kitchen island, placing tops back onto their respective containers, trying my best not to comment on the foul smell of leftover food, alcohol, and vomit that drifted in the stale air. I placed Alex’s cup of coffee before her and crossed beyond the large, high island to put the leftover food from the Thanksgiving celebration into her refrigerator. She had indicated that her relationship with her mother was not all it could be, that this holiday was sometimes stressful, though how could it effect her so much that she would act so differently toward me?

“I have not,” I answered her, turning round to place my hands on my hips. She sat atop a barstool with the coffee in her hand, observing me, looking for all the world as if she’d never seen me before. Alex took one sip from her coffee, then set it aside. She rose, crossed to the coffee table, then, returned with the half-full bottle of amber alcohol. 

“Alex, I can see that you’re… that you had quite the evening last night,” I began cautiously. “Though I hardly think more alcohol is going to do you any favors.”

“You know,” she said, slamming her palms against the counter, visibly _shaking_ , as she took a large breath. I watched her shoulders rise and fall, watched her unscrew the cap on the bottle, and then remove the plastic lid on the coffee I'd brought her. She took the bottle in hand and added a generous amount to her coffee. “I’m not rich enough to afford brunch, but this is as good a fix for an Irish coffee as I’m going to get.”

“Alex, you shouldn’t be drinking—”

“Blake DeLaurier,” she said, stirring the bourbon into the cup. I held my composure while she stared me down.

“Who?” I lied, moving closer, trying my best to walk steadily across her floor as I took the seat she had just occupied. I placed my hands on the island before me and looked at her, but the smirk on her face was triumphant.

“Plays post for the basketball team. Dated Leah,” Alex said, taking a sip of her mixed morning drink. “ _Raped_ Leah.”

I remained still, and waited for her to continue. She didn’t say much, just sipped that Rao-awful drink, and the news droned on in the background. I suppose I missed my cue to look affronted, or to confess, for the newscasters were launching into their three-minute segment on DeLaurier’s attack, how he would be out for the season, how there was video evidence of a shorter person in black, running, and then who seemingly… disappeared from the security cameras.

Which I did do.

Because I flew off campus.

Neither of us looked toward the television, content instead to stare one another down. To listen as we both drew our own conclusions about what the other knew, and about what the other was willing to confess.

“Care to explain that?” she asked, half of the drink gone.

“That he got what he deserved?” I replied carefully.

“Not saying he didn’t deserve it,” Alex returned. “But vigilante justice is a tough road to walk. It’s why we have cops.”

“What are you implying, Alex?” I asked her, moving to clasp my hands together on the table before me.

The corner of her lip ticked up, but she was not amused. 

“That’s a little patronizing, don’t you think?” she muttered. “You do that a lot, y’know?” She took another long pull on the steaming liquid and stared at me. She ran her eyes over every feature—I wondered if she was even studying my ears. “For all that talk about ‘I notice you, Alexandra,’ I bet you never once thought anybody might say the same about you. Might see you doing something that didn’t just blend into the background.”

“Speak plainly,” I told her, feeling my own anger intensify. “If you are going to accuse me of something, better to do it openly rather than with craven suggestions and inferences that have no bearing—”

“Astra.”

I stood from the stool. I felt my jaw twitch. I felt… I felt…

Scared.

“Oh, I’m sorry, that wasn’t right,” Alex replied sarcastically, looking toward the ceiling and furrowing her brows, as if she were truly trying to concentrate. “Brigadier General Astra In-Ze, Arclominian of the First Order and Commander of the Bastion Range.”

I felt hot tears surge as my fingers curled into fists. I felt the weight of history press upon me like the human’s stories of the titan who carried the entire sky on his shoulders. I felt Rao’s punishment, light years away from his dominion, reflected back in eyes the color of this planet, wet and dark and Earthly and alien to me.

Alex looked at me and I felt powerless.

“The Bastion Range is a place,” I whispered, for I had no answer for her. “Commander of the _Soldiers_ of the Bastion Range.”

Alex’s jaw clenched as she gripped tighter against her cup, one tear spilling out the crease of her eye. “That hardly makes a difference now,” she muttered, before taking the coffee and hurling it in my direction. I was too close, and she was too hungover, and I was too hurt. I darted out of the way as the plastic to-go mug splattered and cracked against the brick behind me, and then, Alex started shouting.

“How could you do this?! You complete _liar_! I trusted you and you—you lied to me!” she rounded the island that separated us, but I held my ground.

“How did you know?!” I yelled, meeting her step for step. She ended up with her back against the island, with me leaning over her, and it was then that I saw it, then that I recognized it—the _fear_. I loomed over her but she stuck her chin out at me. She kept blinking, trying to hold my gaze. She was afraid but oh, she was _brave_. “How could you—what do you know of… of anything!”

Her voice shook when she replied: “I know of a c-cowardly, traitorous g-g-general who turned her back on her government—”

“You know _nothing_ of what I have endured.”

“—who k-killed magistrates and was locked away. She abandoned her _family_ —”

“Do NOT speak of what you cannot understand!” I roared, and felt the planks of the island crunch beneath my grip where I had propped myself up, where I had inadvertently locked Alex in, where she stood, defiant to the last, glaring back at me. My eyes were burning hot, and I absently wondered if the glare from my laser vision was causing Alex to shrink away from my heat. I fell against her when the table crumbled beneath my fingers and heard her cry, felt her tremble, saw the fear as she instinctively balled up her body.

Did she believe I would hurt her?

That I would do to her what I had done to the table?

What I had done… what I had done so easily to Blake?

“Alex,” I said, wrenching myself back from our position by the island, speeding away so that I was against the far wall, at least ten feet away. I placed my hands over my face as I shook my head, as tears I could not staunch came bursting forth from my eyes, as I watched her, my brave, tough, broken Alex, pull a five-inch splinter from her forearm.

“Forgive me,” I begged, falling against the wall behind me, sliding to the floor, feeling the brick rattle against my spine. I stepped on top of the plastic Alex had thrown and heard it crunch beneath me, heard it shatter into pieces. “I am so sorry, please, Alex—”

Alex turned back to me and blinked, but could barely meet my face. “H-How could you?”

“How do you _know_ , Alex?”

“You don’t exactly hide it!” she insisted, flinging her arm wide, wincing at the cut and pooling drops of blood. “You _flew_ to catch that van on Wednesday, do you realize that?”

I simply sat against the opposite wall, shaking my head in disbelief.

“The first night I stayed at the shop, studying?” she continued, crying through her accusations. “You sped around c-cleaning… it took you moments. I thought I had only imagined it, b-b-but you, Wednesday, the angle of the ricochet… that bullet had to hit something. And there was nothing in that alley but you and Cat Grant.”

It grew quiet, save for the chatter of the commercial break across the apartment. The light outside the window was pleasant, beautiful, even… on my way over I had seen shoppers lining up outside of various establishments to get to their major holiday sales, I saw coffee houses packed with early-risers, but I felt even more justified in my shutting down for the day. I had a date with Alex, I was going to Alex’s apartment, we were going to spend the day together—

“Bullet proof,” Alex began. “Your eyes were glowing at me—”

“I am sorry.”

“Your speed, you can _fly_ , just like him…”

I nodded slowly, wiping my fingers beneath my wet eyelashes, tucking my hair behind my ears, staring at the floor when I confessed: “I concede that… all of the evidence d-does point t-to my being—”

“Kryptonian,” Alex finished for me.

“But none of that explains how you know the titles,” I insisted. “My name, no one knows my—”

“Please,” Alex scoffed, staring me down furiously. “Cat Grant shouted for ‘Astra’ on Wednesday.”

“All the same, I am nothing to your people,” I argued. My reputation was known, of course, but not in this galaxy. Not to this crude, primitive planet. “How do you _know_ me?”

Alex shook her head. “Now you’re just being cruel.”

“How?!” I yelled again, unable to keep my voice down. I balled my hands into fists and stared resolutely at her feet, unwilling to let myself scare her again, but still—there was no conceivable way for her to _know_. “You are the one being excessively cryptic. Your people know only as much of Krypton as your flying man from Metropolis will reveal.”

“Seeing how careless you are with your powers,” Alex sneered, “it’s no wonder you underestimate us. But humans aren’t clueless, _Assss-truh_ ,” she enunciated each syllable as if it were a curse. “But of all the ways you could’ve found her, why did you make me—why did you have to go through me?”

“You are talking nonsense,” I insisted, daring to scramble back up to my feet, daring to step forward. She held her ground by the splintered table as I approached, crunching once again over what was left of the plastic coffee cup.

“You made me want you,” Alex whimpered. A fresh flow of tears began to run over her cheeks, and I batted down the impulse that told me to comfort her, that told me brush away those wet tracks with the pads of my thumbs. “You made me think… you made me feel like I was _worth_ something.”

“Alex…” I said, wiping at my own face with the back of my hand. I felt so confused. I felt so… so _angry_ , but Alex was crying, and she was crying because of me. “Alex, you have to… you have to tell me more than this. You are asking me to solve a puzzle without all of the pieces, an equation with too many unknown variables… Alex, I do not understand…”

“I want her back,” Alex sobbed, crossing her arms over her torso to hold herself together. She shook and sobbed and moaned little despairs that I could not make sense of. She cried and I waited until I could stand it no longer. I returned to her and she fell into my arms, and we cried, and we held each other, and she repeated her wish into my shoulder until I felt it seared against my skin: “I want her back… I want Ashley, I want Ashley _back_.”

“I am sorry,” I analyzed all the troubling suppositions and theories whirling through my head, but none of them mattered as much as a repeated apology. “I am sorry, please, please explain… I do not _understand_ , Alexandra—”

She grabbed the back of my head and pulled me down as I clutched at the fabric of her t-shirt. She kissed me, hard, and I felt the tears pouring, I felt her shaking so violently she could scarcely keep her lips aligned with my own. I tasted a hint of mint from toothpaste and a bit of bourbon but overwhelmingly, coffee; overwhelmingly, that little drink that brought us together in the first place. I felt her knees give and so I lifted her, swiping my hands beneath her to remove any splintered remnants from the table. She gripped the back of my collar so desperately I wondered if she would tear my shirt.

I wore a purple blouse, a far nicer top than I would wear to the shop. Because I was coming to see Alex on a holiday, because we were spending the day together, because I wanted to look _nice_ for her, because I was meeting her family. I wanted her to find me attractive. I wanted to kiss her again today, after I had given her the present. I wanted to press my lips against hers as we had those few weeks ago when we danced in the shop, when I knew she was meant for me. I wanted to hold her again, and kiss her again, once, sweetly, but not like this.

I set her atop the table and she tugged at my hair, parted her legs as I stepped into her. Her heart was thundering within her chest and my own slammed into my ribs as her thighs squeezed my hips. I could feel her against me as she held me there, kept me close, perhaps hoping that disregarding conversation in lieu of this desperate embrace would absolve us both of our deceptions.

“Alex,” I pulled away and she clung tighter, crying against me. “Alex, I am _begging_ you…”

“How could you do it?” she whispered, cupping my face as if she were holding glass, as if she were not just as likely to throw me against the brick and shatter every portion of me. She tilted my head up to look at her, sitting atop that tall kitchen island; she searched me for a reason, but she did not seem to find what she was looking for.

“How could you attack that boy—how could you betray your planet—when you make me feel like this?”

“You do not know…” I insisted, shaking my head as gently as I could, feeling her fingers curl over my cheeks. “You do not know the half of it.”

“I know enough.”

“But _how_?” I asked, clutching tighter against her waist. My fingers fit perfectly within the ridges of her ribcage. She was exquisite in my arms, and we had danced Rao’s fated step. She drank my coffee. She knew my _name_.

“How can you know those accusations… my titles? My name? Even the workers at the shop…” I trailed off, hoping she would provide some clarity where I only saw the dreary haze of upheaval, of turmoil, of that full-body uncertainty I would occasionally harbor on dangerous field missions.

“I know enough to see when I’m being used,” Alex said, removing her fingers from my cheeks, leaning away as she placed one hand to the side. The other went to swipe at the snot and tears on her face.

“I would never use you,” I said, feeling her knees against me, feeling the muscle of her thigh jitter when my hand fell to the flesh there. “Where… where have I overstepped?”

“You’ve lied to me from the beginning.”

“I had to, Alex. You don’t understand the regulations—the security measures they have in place… I could not have worked, nor gone to school…they would’ve inserted a tracking device—”

“They do that to make sure you follow the rules,” Alex said. “But you’re not. You’re just… you’re doing the same thing you did on Krypton. You take what you want with little regard for anyone else.”

“That is not fair,” I said. “Do you know why I became an ecology major, Alex? Because your planet, this gorgeous, fresh Earth, is galloping headlong toward destruction. If I had truly given no thought to your human wills, I had a tool—I designed a program capable of enslaving this entire population, of tuning their attentions to fixing all of the mistakes you keep making on such a vast scale… you are killing yourselves and I am standing by when I know better, Alex, I know better than most on this planet, but you—” I brushed the hair away from her face and snatched a rag and wet it and then was back in her arms in an instant, wiping away the tears and the residue of sadness as she curled into me. “Alex, every day I wonder why I didn’t try to implement Myriad to save this Earth, but then I speak with Jeremiah, and Han, and Leah and Connie and you, darling, and I know I could never alter your brilliant mind. I am alien to you, yes, but please do not think I have ever harbored any ill-will against you, against this planet. It is my home now, and I will do what I can, in my own small way.”

“Wait,” Alex said, removing the rag from her face. “You mean… you mean it wasn’t for her?”

“Her?” I asked. “What are you talking about?”

“You didn’t find me for—oh,” she said, looking down at me with a softer gaze, that twinkle of amazement I’ve seen under the fairy lights outside my shop returning for an instant. “You really don’t know, do you?”

“Alex…” I said, dropping my head forward, feeling my own emotional exhaustion beginning to take its toll. She cradled my head in her arms as my forehead pressed against her sternum. I could feel her heart slowing, less urgent, coming down off some strange, violent high we’d both unexpectedly encountered on an early holiday morning.

She tilted my face back up and kissed me once again, briefly, easily, and I wondered if it was her way of apologizing.

“I am going to tell you something, and then, I don’t think we should see each other any more.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head against her. “Do not tell me, then. Nothing is worth losing you.”

“Because the second I tell you, you’re going to try to make it work. And I can’t… I can’t… you have to know, I’m trying to protect her…”

“Please,” I said. I took her hand from my shoulder and kissed her knuckle, kissed her palm, kissed that small protrusion on her wrist until my lips knew every inch of skin there. “I am sorry I lied to you—”

“It’s not me I’m worried about.”

“Your selflessness, your bravery, how could I have hidden from you? You are so smart, Alexandra—”

“Please,” she said, tilting her head back as I hovered off the ground to reach her, as my lips pressed against her neck and she closed her thighs tighter round my hips once again, drew me in, everything snug and locked so securely together. “Please, Ashley—”

She took my hand and placed it on her breast, over her shirt, then drug her teeth against my lip. We kissed for long, indolent moments, kissed until we were panting from the headiness of it all, not the sobs. She untucked my blouse and my fingers traced paths up and down her legs. She popped the top button of my shirt and kissed my jaw, my neck, that sensitive place where my shoulder and throat meld together. She bit my collar bone and snuck her fingers beneath the fabric of my shirt, scraping teasingly at my abdomen with her short nails. When she released me I was floating, and she was staring, and my hand had returned to palming her chest.

“Tell me—”

“I’m sorry for earlier,” she huffed, panted, drew me closer and kissed me once again. “Ashley… I want you to fuck me.”

I shook my head, wondering how badly this might break us.

“You have something to say and… and it will change everything, will it not?”

She nodded as she draped her hands over my shoulders, then placed her forehead against my own.

“Will it make me love you any less?” I whispered, for how could she not know how quickly, how deeply I had fallen for her, no matter what she thought of me? She wanted at least some of me… Ashley was not a total construction… she had everything of my own, even parts of my history. Alex kept me so disoriented with tears and kisses and touches that I rationalized that part of me was enough. That who I was wouldn’t really matter in the end, as long as I was with her.

Ashley didn’t have Krypton, but then again, neither did I.

After long moments of my stillness Alex brushed her nose against my own, nuzzled against my cheek, peppered my face with chaste, light kisses that made me feel secure once more. And when she kissed me, opened her mouth, tasted whatever stardust I had left within me, I was at peace.

“Ashley,” she whispered, twining her fingers into my curls, breathing hot and desperately against my ear. I couldn’t have known then that she wanted me angry with her. That this was her self-destruction manifesting in pleasure. That she had grown so used to sacrificing every part of her happiness that she wanted her betrayal to sting as hotly as magma. “Ashley, I want you to…”

“My name,” I begged as I flew higher, as she fell back on the island, as the box of scones went sailing over the ledge and onto the floor, as I swept aside plates and pots and napkins while she bit my ear.

“Astra—Astra, _please…_ ”

“Rao, Alex,” I shuttered on top of her as she finished unbuttoning my blouse, fingers clumsy but persistent. My own hands at my waistline, as I awkwardly shuffled to my knees, as I kissed her and hastily unzipped my pants, pushing the fabric over my hips so I could rock against her thigh again. Her shirt, gone. Her hands, pulling my hair, her mouth, swallowing my moans. Her breasts, firm and sensitive in my grasp. Every piece of her, every inch of her, blooming beneath my touch and straining for more. When I worked inside of her she screamed into my mouth and bit me so hard I nearly felt pain.

“Oh, oh… _Alex_.”

She canted her hips but I pushed down easily, careful not to overstep.

“ _Harder_.”

Which was apparently the wrong move.

But we were in her kitchen, and we were crying, and we were kissing, and this is not how I wanted it for her. Not how _I_ wanted this. It was not what I had envisioned, and certainly not what she deserved. But I kept pressing into her and she kept sighing and kissing me, and I couldn’t help but feel there was still so much missing, so much that could have been _more_ if I had only listened to her.

She shoved her hand between my legs and I was soon riding along beside her, just as breathless, just as heady and lost to sensation as she was beneath me. She looked at me for every second of it, and I wondered if she’d often seen partners on the verge of tears as they made love to her. At the time I had believed this was my penance for lying, that I was strengthening what little remained between us. So I pressed harder, just when she asked, and twisted, and kissed, and stoked the fire within her with my tiny confessions in a language that was not completely foreign to her ears. And soon, I felt her stiffen, felt her fingers stop their exploration, felt her pull my hair tighter as she got out the first syllable: “As—!” But I cut her off with a kiss, afraid of the name that would fall from her lips.

I floated above her as she recovered, but her arms sought me out.

“I can’t… my hands…”

She was spent, and gorgeous, but she looked so _sad_.

“Take what you need,” she said, maneuvering so her leg shifted between my legs. The urgency returned when I felt her skin against me, and I could not stop myself from rocking on top of her.

“Alex—”

“Astra,” she said, staring up at me, brown eyes glistening.

I rocked and kept my hands round her waist, heard the island beneath us creak under the pressure. But she recovered eventually and helped me, touched me, sat up so that one hand could finish me off below as she cradled my cheek with the other, brushing away the tears I cried from how wonderful it felt.

“I love you,” I whispered to her, and she kissed me when I came.

 

 

* * *

 

 

I cleaned the apartment once I came back to myself.

I felt it the least I could do.

Plexiglass underfoot. Coffee staining the wooden floorboards. Pastries dropped and a rag tossed haphazardly into the sink. I righted all the overturned bottles and shoved what food still looked good into the fridge and disposed of the wastebasket with the vomit all while Alex was pulling her shirt nervously back over her head. When I returned, I extended my hand to help her down off the island. She took it, but didn’t look me in the eye.

“Go sit down,” she told me, and so I tried to lead her with me to the sofa. “No, I… I need to go get something.”

I did as I was told, waiting impatiently for her to return, unsure of where we were to go from here.

Whatever line in the sand I might’ve drawn concerning my identity had been summarily quashed by Alex, but she still never answered my question. For if she knew, then others might, which could put more than my own well-being in jeopardy. I had employees who depended on me, and I was, surprisingly, roped into playing occasional security guard to a media mogul. M’gann and Roulette seemed so far away, but that was a cause I had committed to, one I had promised to see through so that M’gann would stay safe. And I would see it through, just as I would see through whatever it was that was going on with Alex. We could make it work, certainly. I had overcome more disastrous battles than something as… something as… trivial as a mistaken (okay, _concealed_ ) identity.

She returned momentarily, holding two black frames in her hands. She set them aside and took my hands, her brow furrowing before she spoke.

“We can’t see each other any more,” she said.

I am certain my jaw dropped open in astonishment. I am certain my brain was experiencing some malfunction, that my ears were deceiving me, that she was playing a trick on me to… to… try and add some cheerfulness to a morning too emotionally overwrought.

She could not have possibly said such a thing after she had asked me to... after we  _both_ had... after I had just told her… after I said I _loved_ her.

“Do not be ridiculous,” I said.

“Astra, you are a Kryptonian. And you are a criminal.”

“I was wrongfully imprisoned!”

“I can only go off of what I know,” she said, shaking her head, “and I know that things worked differently there than they do here, but I’m also seeing a pattern.”

“Pattern?” I asked, taken aback, staring into a face that she kept carefully blank. “What ‘pattern’?”

“You did infiltrate that... that… uh, it was a government building, right?”

“What are you—you mean on Krypton?”

“Yes.”

“Then yes,” I said, though how Alex might know that, I had not clue. “Though what bearing an action from… from thirty years ago has on you and me is—”

“You killed a guard.”

“ _Non_ killed a guard.”

“Your husband?” she asked, brushing her fingers over my knuckles. She was being so tender with me, so considerate, physically, that I couldn’t reconcile her words. Couldn't reconcile the detached octave of her voice, or her vacant stare. As if we hadn't just experienced such desperate intimacy it left us both trembling.

“Yes,” I murmured.

“But you authorized an infiltration that you knew was illegal," Alex pressed, placing her hand on my knee. I could feel her skin even through the thick denim of my jeans, and yearned for her hands on me again. "You circumvented the rules to get what you wanted.”

“Our planet was _dying_ , Alexandra,” I insisted. “It did die. I pray you’ll never have to know that sorrow.”

“And then, when the rules did not dispense justice as you saw fit, you, an all-powerful Kryptonian, attacked a human.”

“A _rapist_.”

“He should be in jail for a long, long time,” Alex began. “But going off the rails like that… dispensing your own justice, without a jury… can’t you see how wrong that is?”

“Your system is wrong,” I declared. “He walked free for weeks and saw no consequences, while Leah remains skittish as a squirrel.”

“But Astra, what else are you caught up in?” Alex asked me. “To have a hitman try to gun you down, in front of your shop—”

“That wasn’t me!” I insisted, “That was Cat Grant. There is… it is complicated, but there is… the military, and alien experimentation, deals within the private sector for biochemical weaponry and they need test subjects—”

“You’re working on a project that would have aliens experimented on?!” she gasped.

“I am not… I am… we are trying to dismantle the operation,” I said. “It is complicated, Alex.”

“You have no idea,” she replied, reaching for the first photograph. “But that makes this decision even easier, and, if your actions are indeed as honorable as you claim, I’m hoping you’re a woman of your word.”

“I am,” I told her, reaching for her face one last time (I did not know it would be the last time I would touch her for months). "I swear to you, Alex, I would never do anything to knowingly hurt you."

Alex nodded, turning into the touch at her cheek. She kissed my hand, my wrist, giving it the same attention I had paid her only moments before. She sighed, hitching, as if she might cry again, and then issued her directive: “Promise me you won’t come looking for me.”

“Alex," I began, bewildered. "Alex, no—”

“I can’t make it any clearer. We can’t… I can’t be with you. I… I _won’t_ be with you.”

I am sure I would have started crying again if I had anymore tears to shed.

“But… but I _love_ you.”

“If you love me, you’ll respect my wishes, won’t you? I just… I’m not bullet proof, Astra.”

“I know, believe me, I know how fragile you are—”

“I’m not that, either!” Alex bit back. “But for most of my life, I’ve had one job, and I’m not going to stop doing it now. Not even for you.” She pulled me closer and kissed me goodbye, then forced me to make a promise I had never planned on making.

“Promise me that after today, you won’t seek me out,” Alex said.

“I… Alex, please…”

“Promise me, Astra.”

“You never felt anything for me?” I asked desperately.

“Of course I felt… Astra, I… it’s so _complicated_ ,” she lamented, and I hated how exhausting my own explanation sounded coming from her lips. “I could’ve loved you more than anyone, I think,” she whispered.

“...could have?”

“Promise me you won’t seek me out,” she said again, clutching the picture frame in her lap all the harder. “You won’t look for me, or my family. I can’t help if… if you run into us by happenstance, and I won’t interfere, but I can’t be the one to open that gate… to… to vigilante justice and alien experimentation and fighting and tracking devices… I’m not going to do that to her, do you understand?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t understand anything.”

“Understand that what I’m doing is for the best, even… even if I really don’t want to,” she confessed. “Will you promise me, or do I have to keep this from you?”

“Does it mean we would still get to see each other?” I asked.

She thought for a minute, staring at her carpet. I had dabbed it with a wet cloth and sprayed what little remained of the cleaner in her closet atop the liquid, but the stain had already set. A permanent blemish for her to remember the occasion, as if the depression settling in weren't enough already.

“No. No, I don’t think it does.”

“Alex—”

“Promise me, Astra,” Alex said, and she looked so _tired_ , so disheartened, as if everything she had ever hoped for had been yanked away from her and her arms were so tired from holding on, as if she thought it was finally time to let it all go.

“Very well,” I said, feeling that shadow of sorrow pass over me. I kissed her forehead and moved back on the couch, blinking fiercely to gather myself. “I promise not to seek you out.”

“You won’t come near my family? You won’t try to follow me, or them?”

“I promise not to come near your family.”

“Anyone who calls themselves ‘Danvers’, okay?”

“I won’t follow anyone who… who goes by ‘Danvers’.”

“Swear,” Alex seemed choked, seemed like this was harder than she had ever intended it to be. “Swear by something you hold dear. Swear by Rao.”

“You would ask me… you would ask me to forsake my gods if I came looking for you?”

“Swear by Rao you won’t go looking for a Danvers.”

“I swear upon Rao, the Light and Life of All, that I will not seek out the Danvers.”

“That’s my last name,” Alex said, as if I hadn’t been daydreaming of that name for the past several weeks. “The name of my house.”

“Humans don’t have Houses,” I scoffed.

“I’m trying to make it easier for you to understand.”

“I told you since this morning, I do not understand any—”

Alex turned the photo frame around and practically threw it in my lap. She buried her head in her hands and leaned over the couch, and I wondered if she was going to throw up again. I finally turned my attention down toward the photograph, two girls playing in the sand. Dark hair, dark eyes, the surfboard peeking out in the corner of the picture. And then, the other girl blonde and blue and looking nothing like Alex, but everything like—

“Kara,” I whispered, running my fingers over the glass where she smiled at me. “You know…you know my—my Kara?”

Alex handed over another picture, far more recent, taken of the two of them in front of the UCNC campus sign. Kara was as tall as she was, her face bright as Rao’s light, her smile, lovely, her eyes, sparkling and eager and kind as Alura’s had been every day until the final year, until everything had crumbled so hopelessly through my fingers…

“You can’t go looking for her,” Alex intoned, staring at the table.

“I most certainly—Alex?” I asked, fitting the jagged pieces together, wondering if I were trying to reconstruct a puzzle made of glass, trying to put the shards that had crunched beneath my feet back together without cutting myself, without bleeding open and grinding more and more slivers into my flesh. “She’s... you can’t possibly expect me to—she’s my _family_ , Alex.”

“She’s my sister, and you’re not getting anywhere near her.”

I gripped the photograph so hard the frame broke. I was floating three feet above the sofa and Alex was staring resolutely at the table.

“Tell me where—”

“You swore by Rao.”

“That was before I _knew_ —”

“You think I want to do this?” Alex asked. “You’re… you’re wrapped up in shootings and experiments and a potential police investigation if they ever catch wind of what you did to Blake. They’ll look at every single one of your connections, and I’m not putting Kara through that.”

“She doesn’t have to… we can… we can protect her—”

“It’s time for you to leave,” Alex said, pressing up off the couch with both hands on her knees.

“Are you going to make me?”

“We both know I can’t,” Alex mumbled. “But I am hoping you will honor your word.”

“What good is my word when that promise was made under false pretenses?”

Alex shrugged. “I can’t physically stop you. But, if you do break your promise… it’s gonna suck for Kara to know that her aunt fucked her sister just to get to her.”

“Alex!” I sped behind her, pleading, begging, but she opened the door, and jerked her head toward the hallway. “Alex, Alex, this is _cruel_!”

“I won’t be back by the shop,” she said, refusing to meet my face. “You should know that I will do anything in my power to protect her.”

I walked out of the apartment clutching the broken picture frame, wishing I could feel the glass I’d broken against my skin. At least then I would be able to _feel_. At least then this startling numbness wouldn’t consume me.

“Even break my heart?” I asked her, pulling the photograph up to my chest, staring, bereft and lost, as Alex leaned against her door.

“Yeah,” she said, shutting the door between us before I used my x-ray vision to watch her collapse in anguish, beating against the wood with one closed fist. “Even that.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> go on and yell at me, I know you want to


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> astra is bi in this, mmmk?

It was frigid and desolate beyond the forcefield.

I believe the human temperature equivalent might be several tens of degrees below the freezing threshold, but Kryptonian technology helped us keep warm.

As well as other activities.

I was breathing hard when Con-Tul rolled off of me and reached for the Interceptor. His command was paramount, and he committed to the point of inconsideration—he would double- and triple-check our communication devices even when we were off-duty, no matter which out-post we were deployed to.

On Yygdern IV, in all of that snow, we fumbled about on too-small cots beneath blankets lined with Klicing ore, a mineral that heated synthetic fabrics, mined from the fields of Krypton’s southernmost canyons, near the natural wonder of the Arclominian Halls. I had yet to receive the title from that region, years ago, when Krypton was still whole and my affair was at its peak; when I thought I could—what is Kara’s phrase?—have my pizza and eat it, too.

“ _Captain_ ,” I groaned playfully, raggedly, once I’d caught my breath once again. “Our call is not for several hours, yet.”

“The rebels have taken the lower ridges. If the snow slows—”

“The snow has not stopped falling since we arrived two cycles ago,” I argued petulantly, but somehow, I was still galvanized by his kisses and our well-maintained secrecy.

There were no whispers of impropriety in the barracks. No scuttlebutt floating from lip to lip back aboard our vessel. Merely a close, professional “working relationship” between a Captain and his senior-most Lieutenant that no soldier would ever be the wiser of. I pushed myself up on one arm and held the Klicing blanket against my chest with the other, still young enough to want more from him, still vulnerable enough as a Kryptonian under a Red Sun to feel the lovely, lingering sensations of his hands on my body. “Come back to bed,” I commanded, wrapping my arms round his lean bicep. My chin on his shoulder, his eyes shifting from the coordinates on the Interceptor’s display to my fingers tapping lightly against his kneecap. “Please.”

“You will see me tired beyond all functioning on tomorrow’s patrol,” he smiled at me, but moved so that he sat once again at the edge of the cot while my hands migrated, fingers trailed along his scapula, his spine, the scar he’d borne at the end of a Daxamite harpoon. He kissed me quickly before setting the Interceptor aside, turning his attention, his regard, his devastatingly beautiful focus, back toward me. I had never felt so _seen_ , not with Alura there to attract someone’s first notice. But when he looked at me, he softened to the point of reverence, as if he felt it a privilege to hold me, and that I would look at him the same way in return.

I loved him, even if I did not fully understand such feelings at the time.

And even after all my travels, in the raptures and highs I’d experienced on 18 planets by that point, I thought he was the most wonderous thing I had ever seen.

The snow pounded against the forcefield we had activated above our shelter, one in a series of semi-circular encampments similar enough to Quanset huts on earth, but far smaller, and far more sturdy. The exteriors diffused light, something of an invisibility shield. We hardly had to worry about heat-sensing devices, what for all the snow. It was evening, and half the troop was out on patrol under Aurora Tor-An, our second Lieutenant who reported directly to me. The other half of our troop was either asleep, or, had come up in guard rotation, and was monitoring the Deltahedron, a miniature energy source used to power all of our encampment.

On Yygdern III, IV, and V, each planet was caught in some meteorological upheaval. Heavy rains exacerbated floods, heat and drought plagued lands beyond that which sentient life could stand, and snow, bitter, unforgiving and relentless, toppled down from the sky as if it were endless fragments of an enchanted mirror repeatedly shattering.

We had been deployed in a perpetual blizzard for the human equivalent of nine weeks, and were working on relief efforts for the people of Yygdern IV.

As instability found its footing, so did evil men. Rebel groups from rural regions rose up against the central government once they discovered the establishment’s communications systems were failing due to the unstoppable snow. The freeze was perennial, Yygdern IV had never been a blossoming planet. Yet depths of those magnitudes threatened to bury the citizens alive, which is what we hoped to prevent.

Con and I had worked nightly patrols near the stores and central communications units for the first month, so our interludes were infrequent and brief. But now, back to seeing a distant, foreign sun once more in the day-time meant I had some nights to myself, or, if I was discreet… with Con.

“You wear haggardness unreasonably well,” I flirted, and he kissed me deeply to show his gratitude. Callused hands touched my ribs and soft, wet eyes gazed at me, eyes that had seen more battle than I had at the time, barely four years out of the Academy and thinking that all of Krypton’s adjacent galaxies were mine for the exploring.

He was mine for the keeping.

And Krypton, it was mine for the protecting.

“We will be returning to Argo City Station soon,” he mumbled into my neck, pulling me back down to lie beside him. I tossed the blanket over his form and huddled against him, the chill of my toes warmed once I touched his calf with my feet. His faux annoyance was endearing, but he weathered my ice-cube toes with good-nature and calm understanding, knowing there were bigger battles to fight than my poor circulation on the snowy planet.

I shifted as best I could over to the side, wondering at his phrasing: _soon_ wasn’t just a world away, but a galaxy. I loved homecoming as much as I loved adventuring, and yet here he seemed melancholy over the prospect.

“Much can happen in another cycle, Captain,” I murmured, tucking into the space he made for me at his side. “Especially if we’re both lucky enough to draw day-patrol again.”

“Astra.”

“Yes?”

The lowlight from the bulb across the Captain’s quarters shown an eerie lavender, one of the more difficult colors to make out by enemy scouts since the snow itself was tinted similarly. It cast him in an unnatural pallor, his sand-stone skin and jet-black hair transformed to something demonic, not lovely. I think I had grown used to it, for only upon scouring my memory did I balk at the remembered appearance. He was my Captain, my fate, and I was recklessly brave enough to follow him.

He spread his hand before me and I grasped hold, threading my fingers between his. We studied that grasp for silent moments, and I waited for him to finish whatever he wanted to say.

“I wonder… if we should continue this.”

Even as he said it, I could tell he held no conviction in his voice.

“What—what are you—what do you mean?”

My fingers felt limp and my toes grew colder, but he never released me. He held me tighter and brought my hand close to his chest so that I might feel his heart beating below my own lifeline.

“To spare us future pain, we should… you are joined to another, Astra.”

“I do not feel for him what I feel for you,” I insisted.

“And what is that?”

Alura had mentioned it. Not because she had experienced it personally, but because Lara, her dearest friend besides myself, had met the other El brother, _Jor_ -El, and spoke of moments when her abdomen would clench, when her pulse would become irregular, when the fated step of Krypton transcended sense to something of a physical manifestation—it was no longer a pairing merely blessed, or a pairing fated, but a pull so strong only the mightiest of powers might sever it.

I knew the many types of love I felt, and it was strange reconciling this new form of the emotion. I loved my sister so deeply that I could not put my devotion into words. My pride for my planet, my military, my role as its protector, was love of another sort. I loved bright days under a red sun and traveling nearer the planet’s meridian, where the rains were not toxic and small bits of natural green could still be seen growing in the forests—not thriving, but present. I loved the idea that Alura would be a mother; I loved my troops, and I loved my battlesuit, the way it fit me and enhanced each movement so that I could strike with speed, accuracy, strength. I loved a specific soup the people of Yygdern IV cooked fairly often for our troops. I loved the symphonies in the High Halls of the Artist’s Guilds. I loved the delicate balance of new discovery and wary history.

In short, I loved my life. After a wanting childhood as spare, as superfluous extra, I had carved out a section of life meant for me and only me.

I was greedy.

But I needed loving.

Young as I was, I let myself be vulnerable to it.

(Poor judgment, on my part.)

“Do you feel…” Con-Tul’s silhouette was striking against the lavender light and the grey walls of the shelter. “I cannot say what I feel when I look at you, Astra.”

“Why is that?”

“Everything contradicts itself,” he insisted. “I look at you and have never known such beauty. I’ve never felt such pride, or terrible, crushing fear. If something ever happened to you—and yet, I watch you in the field, with your troops, with your sights and your Phaser, and I have never felt more safe. You make me feel so strong, as if I’m more than low-born, more than what the Chancellors think of me. You make my heart _hurt_ and my chest warm and you know I hate when you put your toes on me that way.”

“But you let me,” I whispered. “Every time.”

“I have heard… there are other cultures who place more emphasis on this—this _feeling_. But I think it’s… Astra, I think I love you, ardently. And I think it is because of that intensity that we should discontinue this relationship. Affairs are rare on Krypton.”

“I know..." I gulped, thinking of dishonorable discharges, shunned and unemployed and unable to visit my family again. "And punishable.”

“Less concerning when the authorities are light years and galaxies away.”

“But if it is right…for us, for what _we_ feel… I feel right with you,” I said, and it was there that I sealed one portion of my fate. I would say something so very similar at my trial with Alura, in the moments before I was transported to Fort Rozz: “If it is right, why should we be silenced? Transfers will not occur unless we are discovered and I—I… I love you in the same way. Con-Tul, I… I think I love you as—as—I cannot put words to it.”

“It is too precious to describe, it would seem.”

“Undoubtedly,” I answered.

“Do you not think it better to leave under our own power, instead of by hands which would force us apart? It pains me greatly to know that Alura was given her choice, and you were used to fulfill a bargain.”

“That it how it has always—”

“I do not care for how you were treated in the past, Astra!” he insisted, cupping my face in his hands. “I should have been given a choice, as well, I should not have merely been at that ball per the request of my superior officer. All of us, even the low- and middle-born, we should have all been given the chance to find… to find this.”

“…it is not done that way, Con.”

“Elsewhere, it is not so difficult.”

We lay together in silence moments after, and I felt his breath even out. He shifted his arm beneath my head and I rolled over him, threw one leg overtop his hips and let the blanket fall from where it covered us.

“I am… coming to realize,” I admitted, “the more I see other places, and the more I witness the interplay of the people in other cultures… I know that Krypton is not perfect. But why should we sacrifice such happiness to a system we simply cannot change?”

“We could run away together,” he suggested. “Become Yygdernians, if they would have us and our susceptible body temperatures.”

“Please, do not joke.”

“You have more to lose than I do,” he insisted. “Family, position, I would never ask you to leave… you have not even met your niece, as of yet.”

“Alura’s latest transmission came through two days ago,” I told him. He pushed up and laid his hands against my hips, and pressed his lips between my breasts.

“And…?”

“They have decided to call her Kara.”

“Kara… Kara Zor-El?”

“Yes,” I nodded, bringing my fingers up to run through his dark hair. “I think it suits quite wonderfully.”

“A name that will do great things, I am sure.”

“Like her mother before her.”

“Like her _aunt_ , who will be the favorite.”

“I would not know what to do with her,” I answered him. “She will be so _small_ , Con.”

“You will become her light as surely as you are mine, and as surely as you are your troops, my bright, burning star.”

I smiled into his skull, and was thankful for the darkness to hide my blush. “You are too sentimental for the Military Guild.”

“You make me so, do not deny it.”

“I am sure I could make you many other things,” I murmured, lowering myself against him, kissing him once again. When we broke apart to breathe, he was smiling when he touched my cheek.

“No more talk of ending this just yet,” I insisted, moving, delicately, so that I joined with him. His head fell against my shoulder as we rocked together and I whispered promises I believed I could keep. “I will find a way to love you for all time,” I whispered, panting, trying to keep my voice down. “We are fated, you and I.”

“Astra…”

“Con…”

The night wore on and I lived in my stupid naïveté for many weeks on end. Alura sent along transmissions with news of Kara’s birth, and Con was witness to my constant praise of her perfection. He held me the night I started crying inexplicably, the night I realized I would never have a child of my own, not when contracted by the Military Guild. I knew it abstractly, of course, when I put pen to paper and committed myself to something greater. And I cannot say I regret that commitment, even now. Back then, I was not crying for want of a child, but of _Con’s_ child. We would be returning to Krypton within the cycle, and I would get to meet Kara for the first time. I would face that separation Con wanted to face head-on, ourselves, before circumstance and regulations pushed us apart. We would have no reason to call upon each other with any frequency while on leave without arousing suspicion, but it would be difficult after so many nights spent in each other’s arms. It was the first time I learned to love, and I was losing it. I would cry silently when I returned to my own quarters in the evening, Aurora’s bed empty due to her frequent nightly patrols.

Yygdern IV was returning to stability, and we were preparing to depart, until the rural rebels mounted a final assault when the snow stopped falling.

Aurora came to me and pulled me aside after we had stopped the coup, losing not one of our troops in the trade of fire. Leaders were arrested. The people of Yygdern IV had a steady stock of food for many months to come, and all seemed well.

All save one activated mine near the southern barracks, where Con had led a small contingent of troops to protect the southern gates alongside Yygdern soldiers.

“Prepare yourself, Astra,” she whispered as we strode swiftly to the transport. “There were two casualties.”

“The rebels?”

“Were unable to breach, thanks to Yygdernian support.”

“Names of the wounded?”

“Dead.”

“Very well,” I answered, climbing in behind her. “Names, nevertheless. We should send a transmission to the Guild quarters at once.”

“Nor-An,” Aurora answered, pressing the handle against the hovering transport so that it shot faster over the compacted snow, so that we whizzed in and out of stragglers recovering from their positions in the city. “And… and the Captain.”

“Captain Tul?”

“Yes.”

“D-Dead?”

“…an explosion, from what I’ve heard through the Waves. Near the hot spring, where the water source is open—”

“—to civilians, yes,” I said, piecing together the rest of the situation with little prompting from Aurora. She did not say anything, for the transports were monitored, but she did reach for my hand. She was a year my junior, but just as determined as I once was, and I believe she knew, which is why she did not make any feeble attempts at comfort.

“They have been the sun of our lives,” Aurora began. I recognized the prayer instantly, and joined her, even though we were not yet near the bodies. I do not know if I could have completed it, standing over him and seeing him so bloody… so unrecognizable from the man who loved me, and who I loved in return.

“Our prayers will be the sun that lights your way on the journey home. We will remember you in every dawn. And await the night we join you in the sky. Rao's will be done.”

I cried for Con, and all we would never be, alone in the barracks that night.

The following morning, I wore the Captain's insignia, and after the reports were filed, I led our troops home.

I did not cry again for a very long time, even when my planet burned.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Apparently, there is a standard human protocol post “break-up” that includes bashing the "ex" and eating dairy products while crying.

This practice—and many others—was foreign to me.

After my interlude with Alexandra, I returned to my apartment. I cannot tell you if I walked, or if I rode the bus, or if I flew, but the mattress I had purchased was resting against the landing at the base of the stairs. I did not call to inquire as to how the company had maneuvered inside despite my closing down the shop… the windows had just been blown to bits by bullets, so I imagined it was not terribly difficult to infiltrate the premises.

Not that I cared.

Not that I cared about anything at all, then.

I moved the mattress into my apartment with little difficulty. Open floor space was scarce, but I made do. I sunk down on top of it. I didn’t cry. I did cry. I didn’t sleep. I slept for days. I don’t remember eating anything, but I do remember returning to my apartment Friday morning at 10:30 a.m. and stirring Sunday afternoon at 7 p.m., when I heard a knock at my door. The interim was spent in suspension, like Rozz, but somehow far more torturous.

Memories of Alex, of the way she smelled, of the way her brow would pinch and her cheeks would flush, of the way she’d touch me, lightly, as if fearful, made me shut my eyes to escape. The way she grabbed the edges of the hat I had given her, and tugged it down over her head; the way she clutched that NASA mug like a lifeline, and frowned like an affronted aristocrat whenever someone had taken the mug before her; the way she kissed me before that morning, when it was more than betrayal and right on the edge of love—every recollection of her made me ache.

And Kara, my darling Kara… closer than I ever could’ve suspected. A twist of misfortune—or was it fate?—that forced my hand in a deal that would have me forsake Rao, the last piece of my culture I held in any regard should I break my vow and interfere with the _Danvers_. It stung all the more to know that Alex knew, perhaps not at the start, but as the morning wore on… she _knew_ who I was to Kara, and thusly, who I was to _her_. And my beautiful, brave human used strategy to her advantage. Even before her stint in the DEO she was playing at deals, leveraging what little she had against forces far stronger than her.

Recklessly brave, my Alexandra.

While I was wasting away in my apartment, Alex lost herself in drink. She told me years later she slept fitfully for the remainder of the day, and then drank until she forgot me. That Friday evening following the morning I left her, she went out to a club and danced with faceless bodies who would never hold her like I did, and who would never know all the burdens she carried. She betrayed me, yes, but she would come to recognize her faults in time. The aftermath of her drunken night at the club devolved into an arrest and a DUI charge, a stint in what human police call the “tank,” and her eventual recruitment by a Green Martian into one of the world’s top agencies dealing expressly in alien containment. She wondered for the longest time if she was only recruited for her sister, and then, for me… she has always had trouble feeling worthy.

A feeling (especially during that terrible weekend) I knew all too well.

I thought about heartbreak at that time. I remembered my mother’s stern expectation and the way the children would tease us at Instruction. I remembered my professors and their standards, their prejudices against two middle-born anomalies uncommonly bright; I remember losing Con, and the way Aurora pitied me with her silence the moment I received the Captain’s insignia on my battle suit. I remember Rodisia and her little triumphs on Streld, and how I promised to keep her safe.

But the worst of it all… I remember the instant I lost Alura’s trust, the way the light died in her gaze when we locked eyes in the aftermath of the attack on the Science Ministry’s Hall. I remember the hitches in her voice, how the octave was low, as my own voice became when I was hoarse, throat rubbed raw by desert sand and dryness.

_The vice-chancellor’s guard is dead, Astra_.

_The vice-chancellor would rather allow this planet to implode than admit his own error, Alura!_

She gripped my arms and pleaded with me; she shook me, as if it would return my sense. But what good would sense do when I knew of the inevitable end with a surety? When Alura released me she was crying and begging, issuing hollow threats that would do neither of us any good. I went into hiding for a year and my sister did not speak my name again. I lost Alura to the years of warped and bastardized justice the Kryptonians had reinforced from her first day in the halls of Judgment. And I lost Alex to her protective tendencies that had been engrained in her most formative years, in years where she saw Kal-El do fierce battle against the human Luther as well as harmful alien attackers.

But for every ruthless alien and manic human Kal-El fought, there were ten times as many aliens lying low for fear of the registries, and just as many scientists forced to develop dangerous technologies by a government fueled more by fear than a scientific curiosity.

After the fall-out with Alex, I could not rationalize it all as coherently as I can now. It helps that I’ve since learned forgiveness, that through the outstanding circumstances, I forgave the memory of my sister, and I forgave Alex… she even made me brave enough to forgive myself in my failure to find Kara.

Now, I hold her on nights when she returns from the field and I press my lips to the bruises that color her body in loud indigos. And I think of the lessons we both learned in the interim, and I find myself grateful to her for our time apart. That through the fire of our blazing, passionate fall-out, we eventually emerged golden. Purer. Even stronger once we were together again.

Thanks in part to Kara.

Thanks, surprisingly in part, to M’gann and Cat Grant.

Thanks to Connie and Jeremiah and Han and Leah.

Thanks to an ancient Green Martian named J’onn.

Now, every kiss is a treasure. Every turn about the sparring mat, a thrilling challenge. There are no secrets between us, and Kara, once the wedge that drove us apart, we can look to as the reason we were able to come together once again. She united the world when she took up her cape; and long before that, she united two lonely, desperate hearts in need of absolution. She gave that to us. We gave that to each other.

However, such forgiveness would be months away from where I have left off in the story. Back to my apartment and my double mattress. Back to my scratchy eyes from too-many tears cried. Back to 7 p.m. and belated “Barista-giving,” and back to death threats issued on my behalf.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“I will cut a _bitch_!”

“Jeremiah, chill,” Connie reprimanded, taking the plastic container of pizza rolls from him the night I told them, with as much composure as I could muster, that Alex no longer wanted to see me. “We can’t be plotting revenge, yet.”

“Does she have a car? We can egg her car!!!” Jeremiah continued, sailing across my small kitchen to yank open my refrigerator door. “And voila! Eggs!”

“I don’t think we should resort to vandalism,” I muttered, moving about to the cabinets to retrieve some glassware. I had completely forgotten they were coming, had barely moved for two whole days, let alone checked in on the shop downstairs. It was likely that associates from the hardware store had come by to install the windows, and I had been sleeping. Or worse, remembering.

(Con-Tul’s blood splashed steamy and metallic-smelling against the snow, and I had to stop myself from swaying where I stood.)

“Ashley?” Leah asked, moving closer to me and placing her hand on my back. “Are you sure you don’t need anything?”

“So why do you have a mattress in the middle of your floor?” Connie chimed in.

“Han, grab her a water,” Leah instructed, leading me to the bar stool I kept in the kitchen.

Han shifted awkwardly in the corner, clutching his hot plate of homemade spring rolls. His baking mittens were navy and oversized, and his hair stuck up at awkward angles, as if he, too, had somewhat forgotten about our engagement. Leah brought turkey leftovers and a loaf of bread, two Tupperware containers of vegetable casseroles and several slices of ham, green beans, mashed sweet potatoes and sautéed squash slices, and half a pumpkin pie. Connie indulged us all with two boxes of wine.

“Han, water,” Leah commanded, going to her purse and pulling her wallet out. “Then, you and Jeremiah can go down to the corner bodega and get three gallons of ice cream. One has to be chocolate chip cookie dough. Go crazy with the rest.”

“Leah,” I reached for her hand over her bag. “You’re not tutoring anymore, you shouldn’t—”

“I’ve got an awesome math teacher from back in Colorado I talked to over break. Like, wicked smart. She helped me out a little, after she heard about Blake… let me do this, Ashley.” Leah passed the money over to the boys.

“Wait!” Connie stopped him, diving for her wallet and fishing several bills out from the pockets. “Get some Kaluha for the ice cream… or hell, spring for the Bailey’s! It’s almost finals and we all just got through with our families, _in addition_ to a break up… we all deserve it.”

“I’m still not past slashing someone’s tires,” Jeremiah insisted, his mouth downturned, his hands propped angrily on his hips. “No one drops you for no reason. Have you _seen_ you?”

“She has a reason,” I said, nodding as Han silently passed the glass of water my way. “It’s simply personal, and I’d like… I do not wish to discuss it when we are supposed to be having a nice meal together.”

“You should shower, first,” Connie was brave enough to say. “No offense, but Leah and I can take the food from here while the guys get an appropriate amount of booze. Are you a slasher-fic or a rom-com kinda girl?”

“She only watches documentaries,” Han muttered, catching my eye nervously and immediately reddening to his ears. “Or… the radio. In the mornings.”

“Documentaries don’t quite have the catharsis element we’re looking for, here,” Connie protested.

“Some do,” Han shrugged as Jeremiah patted him over shoulder.

“Come on, man, they gave us a job, let’s hop-to.”

“Again, the mattress?” Connie returned, falling spread-eagle from where she stood before the edge of it. “8/10, kinda stiff. You got back issues?”

“Connie,” Leah tsked at her while I felt my small grin grow after watching them. “Now is hardly the time.”

“I needed one,” I explained. “Haven’t you noticed I don’t have a bed here?”

“Oh, well…” Connie looked contrite, propping herself up on her elbows and slinging her long mane of dark hair round her shoulders, twisting this way and that to check out the rest of the apartment. “We don’t come up here much, so… I guess I didn’t.”

“Where do you sleep?” Leah asked, moving to turn my oven on. “Do you have any Pyrex?”

“Bottom left cabinet, but not many. The microwave might be a better option.”

“It doesn’t heat as evenly,” Leah muttered.

“If you’ve got a pizza dish, you can use it for the pie,” Connie suggested, pushing back up off the mattress. “Ashley, I say this with the utmost love in my heart, but you should really go take a shower. You don’t look great.”

“I know, I… I’m sorry.”

“Hey,” Leah insisted, and both of them converged upon me instantly. “You know none of this is your fault.”

“No,” I shook my head, unable, really, to cry anymore, but even more unable to even begin to explain the situation. “It… it was.”

“You said it was—it was Friday morning, right?” Connie asked. “You said you were going to her place to meet the family?”

“…her sister.”

“That’s a big step,” Leah said measurably. “But I think what Connie is getting at is… it’s _Sunday_ , Ashley. I know you don’t like to talk much about your personal life, but have you talked to anyone?”

I turned my head down to stare at my water. It was true. For lack of better phrasing, I was _moping_. I had spent much of the weekend sorting out all of the implications that mine and Alex’s relationship—well, nonexistent relationship, I suppose—might have moving forward. Not that I _could_ move forward with any new information, because Alex had made me promise… and Kara…

“I guess I’ve been moping,” I shrugged, trying to feign a self-loathing that only brushed the surface of what I was really feeling.

“It’ll be okay, Ashley,” Connie said, wrapping me up with one arm to hug me close.

“It will be,” Leah parroted her sentiment, but I could stand their platitudes no longer.

“Maybe… maybe a shower is a good idea.”

“It is,” Leah said. “We’ll start on the food.”

“Very well,” I answered them.

They smiled sweetly in my direction. Connie even managed a small wave as I shut the door. My head thunked against the wood, and I decided I might as well run the water if they were going to be here for a while.

I wouldn’t want to disappoint them as much as I had disappointed myself.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

I eventually did emerge from the shower with wet hair and an appetite. My apartment smelled like food I had never before eaten on earth, hearty, fulfilling, comforting—then again, it might simply be my howling stomach and yellow-sun-powered metabolism. Food was steaming atop the stove burners and one plate was covered in tin foil. Yet, it was significantly quieter than I expected it to be, what with all four of them back from their Thanksgiving break.

“The humans do cook a nice meal,” M’gann said, approaching from where she’d just plunked a throw pillow on...on what seemed to be a brand new set of sheets and matching shams, a bed skirt, four overlarge pillows and a lamp rearranged in the corner. “And they have more loyalty to you than you could ever imagine.”

“M-M-M’gann…” I whispered, but feared speaking any more, knowing my voice would crack.

“Han called the bar,” she said simply. “And I lied and told them I was in the neighborhood.”

“I am sorry,” I shook my head, feeling my sorrow come back suddenly. “I was supposed to be eating with them but I—Alex… M’gann, it’s _Kara_.”

M’gann, to her credit, did not immediately begin asking questions. Instead, she motioned to the spread the students had left for me, and thumbed over her shoulder toward the new bed, hoisted up on some of the shipping pallets I’d recognized from the deliveries at Antonio’s corner market. The sheets looked brand new as well, and that lumpy old couch I’d been sleeping on had been moved to the space in front of the window, near my bookcase and beside the coffee table, so that I might be able to use it for study once I got back to my courses.

“I may have suggested they use their money on something more practical than alcohol and ice cream,” she said, moving to gather me up in her arms. I remained there, my wet hair dampening her shirt, my fingers clutching at her back, and my face buried against her shoulder. I couldn’t cry anymore; I had done too much of that in my self-imposed seclusion. But I did breathe deeply for the first time in days, knowing I could speak openly about the situation with Alex, and that she would advise me with patience and several hundred years’ worth of accrued wisdom.

“We are going to eat,” M’gann said, releasing me. She then moved to spoon various selections onto a plate, and popped the other already prepared into the microwave once she removed the foil. “We are going to talk about Alex, and Kara, and where you go from here.”

“I just… she says they’re _sisters_ , M’gann.”

“Which ‘she’?” M’gann asked, filling a glass of water from the tap. She placed the warm food before me and nodded until I took a bite or two, and then a sip of the water.

“Alex and Kara. Not only do they know each other, they—I have no idea how long they’ve been together. She claimed Kara took her name. Has been with their family for _years_. And now I’ve gone and… and… I’ve been such a fool.”

“It is not foolish to open yourself to kindness, or attention,” M’gann chided me. “Or even love. Just look at what you’ve built, Astra,” she said, motioning toward the bare apartment.

“Some accomplishment.”

“Perhaps not to the military leader of an advanced planet, no,” M’gann chided. “But for an alien who came here with nothing, and met those four kids? Kids who could have just as easily spent their money on textbooks or beer or… whatever else the human youth care about these days, they instead tended to you. They called me when they knew they could not do what needed to be done, and prepared this meal for you. They love you, Astra. And building that loyalty, that little family… that is very much an accomplishment in my eyes.”

I conceded with silence, poking and chewing and swallowing all of the food on my plate, including those odd little pizza pocket pastries Jeremiah had brought, as well as Han’s spring rolls. The wine was gone, and I was glad for it. It would do me and M’gann no good, and I hoped the workers could at least take some consolation for returning to a celebration that was significantly non-celebratory.

“I know you liked her very much,” M’gann ventured, once I had cleared my second plate and was scraping the bottom of the containers to make a third. “That… you never anticipated to feel so much for a human.”

“Rao forgive me,” I muttered, returning to my spot across from her.

At the end of the night, I would retire having shared this burden with another. I would have a full stomach and soft sheets to lie upon, in an apartment that was my own, and I would once again have to face the dawn to figure out this unfortunate mess in which I’d found myself. “I allowed myself to become so entirely infatuated I’m certain I missed numerous signs. She talked incessantly of a sister, and her eyes never left me when my powers slipped. When I am before the workers, they assume me overly clumsy. But it was as if—as if she knew exactly what to look for. As if she had seen it for years.”

“But now you know with certainty that Kara is alive and well, if what Alex says is true,” M’gann countered. “Which must count for something. Health. Happiness. Support.”

“She will not allow me to see her.”

“Why?”

“She believes I will bring danger to Kara,” I explained. “She knows… she knows of my crimes on Krypton, and the only person she could know that from, is Kara. What Kara must think of me now, after all this time…”

“You know just as well as I that Alura never brought Kara into the nuance of it all,” M’gann challenged. “That Kara was young, and still regards that history with a young mind. She is older now, and has been through much. I do not think she would turn you away if you approached her.”

“But that’s just it!” I protested. “I made a bargain with Alex… I did not know, at the time, what it would mean for me, I only wanted to—I wanted her to stay with me—”

“And so you made a bargain without knowing the full terms?” M’gann asked. “That hardly sounds like the general I know.”

“The general you know underestimated the cruelty of humans,” I objected.

“Or the loyalty of sisters,” M’gann tried, forcing me to catch her eye. “Astra, just because Alura could not be what you needed does not mean Alex will let Kara down in similar fashion. You must not let your past rule your future.”

“It is difficult when everything I once knew haunts me at every turn.”

“Then what do you think is the remedy?” M’gann pushed, helping me to tease out the practicalities of the circumstances. “What can you do, how can you prepare, so that you are ready to face her again?”

“Who? Kara?”

“Or Alex,” M’gann said. “All of you attend the same school. Barring legal action, and even then, with yours and Kara’s powers, I doubt she could… well, if you truly wished to see one another, she could not stop you. And you might very well run into the both of them on campus.”

“I have not yet seen Kara, and I only saw Alex in the science complex once in the past three semesters.”

“Then form a plan, general. Figure out your objective and the best way to accomplish it, and move forward.”

“It is not so simple, M’gann,” I sighed, thinking of my vow, of how complex and… and manipulative the entire affair had become. “I just… right now, I have moved passed sadness. I have moved passed distress. I think I… I would very much like to hit something.”

M’gann dabbed at her mouth with a napkin and placed her fork aside. I saw her smirk grow and her brown eyes sparked mischievously. I felt a grin of my own return, knowing I could look forward to taking out my frustrations on an equal in combat.

“If you are still to prepare for Roulette’s upcoming bout—”

“Most assuredly,” I said.

“Well, I think a sparring session can be easily arranged.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The following morning we rocketed into the sky after trading blows, leaving several San Gabriel park rangers scratching their heads and blinking in disbelief, wondering if they’d actually seen a flying woman and a green dragon on the mountainside all the while dodging boulders from a rock slide…

(That we might have caused).

I don’t apologize.

It was the first morning I had smiled since the incident, and I felt prepared to take out my frustrations on any poor alien Roulette saw fit to pit me against. I would likely be doing them a favor in the long run, in addition to sating my temper.

Hell hath no fury like me, when my rage is given free rein.

 

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i apologize for the wait but work... ugh, it's been a busy couple'a weeks yall, and it aint slowing down anytime soon :/
> 
> not super happy with this one, but time to move that plot forward.
> 
> More action next chapter!


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for panic attacks, and Astra-kicks-butt and it gets kinda gruesome cuz she's a warrior so... there also might be some Kryptonite bullets flying.

* * *

 

 

“Again!” I shouted.

The sun was beating down on our bodies in the California desert. I didn’t feel it. Not truly, in the way one feels blistered skin, in the way that melanin morphs beneath the hairs that stand to attention on your forearms. Desiccated in December. Hot at Hanukah. The world did not seem to pause for the upcoming holiday celebrations, and neither, it seemed, did alien death matches.

“Astra,” M’gann tried, though I was quite beyond reason at that point.

“Now!”

“Astra, you’re crying…”

“Do it again,” I ordered her, donning my general’s air as easily as an old battle suit.

My old, surprisingly well-kept battle suit. Even years tucked away with only the occasional morning flight did little damage to the material, more than human lycra, not quite as durable as Lunarian milstran. But it had been maintained, kept tough, still flexible. Similar to myself, I suppose, on the physical side of things. With my powers flourishing under the desert sun, it did not take long to regain what physical prowess I might have lost in my years without practice atop a sparring mat. As a general, I actually saw little battle myself in my final three cycles on Krypton, but I tried to keep the physique the Academy had required; thus, I trained as hard and as often as my soldiers did.

(I have always been of the mind that I would not make a foot soldier do something that I would not do myself, which is the same mentality I transferred to this new life at Brigadier’s. I would not make Connie or Leah clean or mop or scrub the lavatory if I was not willing to do the same).

But this… I do not know if I would put my soldiers through this.

“M’gann, if I am to compete against the Bryakian—”

“It will be many times worse than what I could do to you with my mind, Astra.”

M’gann stood tall in her green form, with her black suit and her dark cape. A green martian, the soul one on this planet (if we are operating under the knowledge that I had at the time). She looked wise and regal and stern in her opposition, her refusal more than evident, judging from the pinch at her brow, the clench of her jaw. We had been training for the upcoming bout at top intensity as far as the physical battling was concerned, but I had yet to withstand the type of psychological torture I knew the Bryakian was capable of inflicting. I’d already seen Con’s bloody body materialize before me; I’d relived the lurch of Rodisia’s torso when the bullet burst through her ribs; and I felt the tremors, light years away, of Krypton shattering, over and over again, like tremors in my soul.

I saw Alura’s smile fracture and a single tear fall down her cheek.

Silence followed.

“Astra, enough of this, you are spent.”

I shook my head and staggered back to my feet. The sand beneath my fingernails seemed to transport me back to Streld. I collapsed again, thinking I saw a glint, thinking my last breath might be taken by sniper fire. I curled in on myself and began panting… it was difficult to breathe, even in all of that open desert air.

“Astra!” M’gann raced to me and gathered me up, leaning my upper body against her knee. She unzipped the tight back of my battle suit so that my chest could properly expand, so that she could lay her comforting green hands upon my shoulder blades. “You cannot even sweat on this planet and yet I see weariness written over every feature,” she chastised me. “The bout is in two days… if you exhaust yourself further—”

“I… understand,” I breathed the answer, but it was ragged. My skull pounded and phantom sharpshooters seemed to be repositioning for a better angle. I wondered at our lack of cover, out there among the arid mountains. “M’gann…” I muttered. “You should get down, you have to—”

“Breathe, Astra. Earth, we are on _Earth_.”

We were most certainly not on _Earth_.

We were on Streld, arid and expansive, and the forces were moving with the sandstorms upriver along the border of the Koryze. Snipers perched in trees and atop ridges and waited for Kryptonian and Lunarian relief trains to make their way down the roads as we brought supplies to the citizens. Then, they would ransack our caravan and take supplies for themselves, fueling a resistance who did little more than slaughter and torture. For all the metallic power Streld deserts possessed, all the beautiful science embedded in the striations along their canyon walls, the ruthless fighters would not give them up; would not release the property back to the citizens who inhabited the area in the first place. Their senseless crusade for resources and notoriety throughout the universe made casualties of their own people… all too similar to Krypton.

“Earth…” I muttered, still finding it difficult to breathe. My chest in the front of my suit still felt tight. The air in my lungs was like steam, hot, cloying, and the way the mountains shuddered before me—it was all a battle I had faced already, and would face again, and again, and then once more.”

“Earth, Astra. With Jeremiah, and with Connie. With Cat Grant, and Roulette at the warehouse—the shooting—you saved her, Astra. You saved her and her son in turn.”

I felt M’gann’s thumbs on my cheeks wiping after tears and sweat, felt her cape wrap over top my head to block the beaming sun.

“You need rest, Astra.”

“I’m sorry,” I muttered, my voice broken and dry.

“You have nothing to apologize for. It is no easy thing to stomach all of your history in an instant, or even over small spaces of time, all jammed together…the Bryakian heaped all my sins upon me and it took days to recover.”

“Will you take me away from this?” I asked, embarrassed by my own weakness, by how broken I sounded. M’gann, my dearest friend, never judged me in all our years together. She was so important, so strong, to go against her people as she did, and I never told—

“You are so beautiful, M’gann,” I cried into her cape while we sat in the hot sand. “And y-you know, you know more than—than _anyone_ , what it’s like to l-l-lose—”

“Shhh, Astra,” she said, bringing me close, enveloping me in care I had not felt since Alex left. “I’ve got you.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“Well, don’t you look… intimidating.”

Cat Grant didn’t look very intimidated to me, not in her too-tall heels and her sleek blue sheath dress, glittering in jewels with her hair in soft curls. It was rather astounding to me, though perhaps it is my alien nature, that Cat Grant’s exterior seemed so terribly well-crafted that others assumed she did not get scared. Which, obviously wasn’t entirely true.

For Cat Grant was terrified.

“This is my battle suit,” I answered her.

“Similar in design to my own,” M’gann chimed in, with a quick flick of her cape in her green form. “Durable material with flame retardant features and—”

“Unless you say it can be easily replicated by a human designer and does wonders for an hourglass silhouette, I really do not see why I need to know the specifics.”

“It will help us both in the bouts,” M’gann griped.

“Which we will be late for, if Hector doesn’t hurry with the car.” Cat looked out the window of her office on a rare cloudy evening in National City. It rarely rained or stormed, but something was brewing beyond the windows of the skyscraper that heralded uncharacteristic weather.  

“I still do not see why you need to attend,” I told her, thinking of her shaking form beneath me as bullets zinged overhead in an alleyway. Thinking of that shock of curly brown hair I had seen sitting on a couch by her side, tucked beneath her arm as if her petite frame might protect him. “If we put you within reaching distance of Roulette, she will surely act again.”

“I don’t cow to threats,” Cat Grant kicked her chin up an inch, as if tilting her head higher might keep someone from bashing it in.

Foolish human.

“You must understand that Roulette will see your presence as a challenge,” I argued. “You did not receive an invitation this time. You told me as much when you said your friend, Mr. Lord, was it?—when he told you where the match would be held.”

“Let me make one thing perfectly clear,” Cat paused, scrolling against the screen of her phone. “Hector’s here, let’s go.”

We followed Cat in her heels and loaded into the elevator, me in my black suit, M’gann in her cape, and Cat in her blue designer dress with the strange ruffles at the waist. “Max Lord and I are not friends. We may both have something to gain from all of this, but I am _nothing_ like him.”

“We do not care of your petty human squabbles,” I muttered. “But if you _die_ , we lose a rather valuable asset.”

“M’gann is not on the slate tonight,” Cat said, removing a shiny circle from her clutch and flipping one lid open. With its sleek metallic exterior and circular shape, I nearly mistook it for my spy beacon. I’d been able to keep it onboard Rozz… perhaps it was Alura’s final mercy, or her final punishment. For me to have a piece of Kara even in that place, a connection I’d never be able to renew.

“She can attend as my… security.”

“Security?” M’gann questioned. “It will not do for me to be seen with a spectator making bets.”

“You are a shape-shifter, are you not?” Cat sighed reluctantly, as if she were explaining something very simple to a very stupid person. Her waspishness tended to grate on my nerves, but she did compensate with being astute. “Just change into something appropriate.”

“That is rather beyond my element,” M’gann answered. “We work in bars and coffee shops, Ms. Grant.”

“Well, if you’d go back to your human form, from what I’ve seen of your coloring, and it being the Christmas season…” Cat Grant’s fingers typed rapidly against her glowing rectangle screen, and her lips quirked to the side as she swiped from picture to picture until finally, she held up the phone in front of her. “Can you manage that?”

“Uhm… yes?”

“Well, don’t be all day about it.”

M’gann morphed from her green form into a black robe—no, gown—no, _dress_ , that drooped over one shoulder and left the other bare, that sparkled along a line above her clavicle and chest, and that left her long legs bare to the open air. She grew an inch in heels similar to Cat’s, and small diamonds that hung from her ears cast distracting shadows against her neck. I have never much felt insecure in my appearance, but standing within such a tight space between the pair of them in their finery had my mind wandering to my own suit, to what I wore at the shop, to what I had worn, day after day, when Alex whispered that she found me beautiful—

“When in doubt, go for the little black dress. A pop of color if you must, but it’s too easy to mess up,” Cat said, striding out of the elevator and nodding at building security as M’gann and I trudged awkwardly behind. I snickered as M’gann stumbled in her heels, and she popped me between the shoulder blades before we arrived at the car.

“Really, ladies, must you?”

“You are no fun, kitty-kat,” I told her.

“Call me that again and I’ll show you how much fun I can be,” she growled, though I hardly think she knew how little her threats affected me.

As soon as we slid into the back seat of her long black vehicle, she placed her finger against a button and a window of black glass rolled up, separating us from the driver in the front.

“Now,” Cat said, fumbling about with a cabinet built into the side of the car. She reached in and extracted a small bottle, twisted the cap, and took a hearty swallow of something that looked like maple syrup but most certainly did not smell like maple syrup. “The game plan, ladies… Astra will fight.”

“I will win,” I said.

“Of course, but… how do I put this delicately? Obviously, try your hardest, but you don’t want to draw so much attention to yourself. If you become a crowd favorite, Veronica will see you in those cages during every bout until you begin to lose favor. Miss Martian—I mean, M’gann… that's what happened to her.”

“My favor is not so secure with my recent loss,” M’gann intoned, fidgeting uncertainly with the hem of her dress. “I am lucky not to be fighting at this meeting.”

“Then we shall hope I do not draw the Bryakian,” I agreed.

“While you are fighting, M’gann and I will see if we can find out anymore about those substances from the last bout.”

“The vats with the… what was it again, Astra?”

“Poison, probably,” I answered M’gann. “Though nothing is certain, there must be some sort of experimental lab connected with the place where the aliens congregate. Roulette pressgangs aliens into battles, and upon their losses, uses them for experimentation.”

“That is not so much Veronica’s style, however,” Cat challenged. “She’s too much of a showman to coop her novelties up in a lab. What good is her work if no one can fawn over it?”

“No… what is the phrase? _Long game_ with that one, then?” I asked.

“No, not really. A project of that scale, with that type of development, and any contracts that might be held with the military… oh, that reeks of someone I’d rather you two not get in with.”

“Care to let us in on the name?” I asked.

“Not until I can verify it, which might happen sooner than we think,” Cat answered cryptically, but I had such little information at the time it was difficult for me to compose a follow-up.

“M’gann will be at your side throughout the evening,” I reassured her.

“So will Jack and Jim, depending on how many bottles my clutch can hold,” Cat nodded shakily, stuffing the small glass objects into her bag.

“You do know Roulette serves the guests alcohol, Ms. Grant?” M’gann asked her.

“I do, but after that run-in near Astra’s shop, I’d rather not give her an opening for poison.”

“That is a smart move, Cat,” I said, somewhat surprised by her foresight.

“Perhaps,” Cat murmured, as the clouds passed by overhead and she turned to stare out the window. “Or perhaps I have learned just a bit too much from experience.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

I did not speak to anyone when I entered the warehouse. I immediately separated myself from M’gann and Cat, so as not to draw attention to our intrepid trio. I flew over top the facility and made my way to the back, slipped in, past the caterers and the servers, all decked out in red and gold… perhaps appropriate for the season, but to me, it just seemed like gilded bloodshed. That is, after all, what the patrons were paying for. The tiny desserts were dusted with golden sugar and the libations were bubbly and garnished with holly leaves—“cheap” as Cat would say, overt, tactless, but my concern was not so much with the front room this time.

I checked-in with the bout-master and remained in my dock, the separate sections divided by long ropes. I stretched and tried to keep my head down. I performed the calisthenics our soldiers did for morning drills, but I did not fly, and I did not blink the heat into my eyes.

“…Green?”

I turned over my shoulder and found a young humanoid from Starhaven staring up at me, the pinched ridges of his face drawn even further together upon inspection of my body.

“Yes,” I replied, moving closer to where he looked down at a shimmering tablet, one with small cells of red and green numbers out beside it, percentage points and arrows, all scrolling across as he typed away at the pad.

“Some name for a fighter.”

“I would not be here if the circumstances weren’t… extraordinary.”

“Sure,” he nodded grimly, hitting a few keys as he gave me one more cursory glance. As he sighed, I noted his youth, his slim build, his bouncing eyes…all very focused on the numbers before him and all very intent on doing his job. “You’re on the final round.”

“Can you give me any indication of whom I will be competing against?”

“That’s against the rules,” he said, jerking his head up to study me more closely. “You… you’re a first-timer, right?”

“Yes.”

“How’d you…” he shrugged his shoulders and depowered his tablet, thumbing distractedly at his ear and growling something like _five minutes, check in zero hour_ before slinking very slowly toward me. “…what do you owe her?”

“I’m here to… to pay off a friend’s debt,” I said, trying to withhold as much as I could. I’d put my name down in place of M’gann, and Roulette had allowed it—likely because there was new flesh in the ring, and also because she couldn’t damage her star fighter too terribly two bouts in a row—Miss Martian was something of a legend on this circuit.

“Must be some friend.”

_Sniper fire all around me in the damning brightness, but M’gann, in her cool, green safety, sheltered me from the worst of it. Memories of Rodisia, heartbreak over Alex, missed chances with Kara, my Little One, my greatest regret—_

“She is indeed,” I answered.

Starhaven boy chewed on the inside of his cheek and looked down at his tablet again, kicking the ground in thought before running his forearm beneath his nose, sniffling as he spoke: “They’re pairing you with Jemm, Saturnian… good luck.”

I stared across the row of docks to the nine-foot alien with magenta skin.

Telepath… bad.

Not quite as powerful as a White Martian, and nowhere near the likes of a Bryakian. So… doable. And with M’gann, there was never a need to use my laser vision, that erupting heat, the crippling weakness of all descended from Ma'aleca'andra and H'ronmeerca; for those sons and daughters of Martian lore were susceptible to fire, settled as they were on the moons of Saturn, dancing long journeys about its rings.

There was no feasible way I would’ve made it through this fight without using some combination of my powers. I had lied upon my registry, insisting I was a cast-off from Daxam. My stomach lurched as I claimed that land, a wretched, ignorant planet of troglodytes, paralyzed in their slave-holding systems with no routes for upward mobility. I never thought of anything pleasant when I recalled Krypton’s demise, save for the potential that Daxam might have been taken along with it, if only to rid the cosmos of their treachery.

I understand, of course in hindsight, that Krypton itself was not perfect…the middle-bornes and low-bornes of Krypton remained within their castes for the most part, but at least Krypton offered great _opportunity_ for succession. Myself and Alura were examples of middle-bornes soaring higher, and Con, hard-working, diligent, and wise, of a low-borne who might’ve made General had his life not been snuffed out prematurely. We were not perfect, but we were rarely cruel--save for the instance of our magistrates letting our people perish.

I had hoped not to draw attention, but as the final fight of the night, the spectators were almost certainly expecting a blood-bath. And if this Jemm seemed only partially as menacing as the Starhaven boy implied, with his non-standard admission of who I would be going up against, as well as his inquiry into whether this was my first bout—well, it seemed that I, or, more aptly, _General_ Astra, would be making a triumphant return.

I only hoped that M’gann and Cat were making some progress in the front room. Alien experimentation sanctioned by the DOD was not simply torturous, unethical, and vile, it was also expensive (apparently a characteristic that matters quite a bit to politicians). So bidding out the trials to independent bio-tech firms seemed like the easiest of options, and members of those firms would certainly be in attendance. But when those firms started shooting their experimented-on aliens into the galaxy after they’d been poisoned, or, essentially, brain-damaged, it made for poor intergalactic relations concerning Earth.

Or so Roulette would come to discover.

And myself.

And Cat, and M’gann.

And one other party I had hoped to leave out entirely when relaying this story, but he plays a fairly important role.

The bastard.

You will meet him soon enough.

Before I could truly wrap my head around a fight with this mysterious Jemm, the first battle had begun. Back were the masks, and I eventually spotted Cat and M’gann, a handsome couple, milling through the crowds as the spectators took their places beside high cocktail tables and found spots in view of massive screens set up on either side of the cage. Roulette emerged in flame and gold this time, and her eyes darted menacingly toward Cat. M’gann’s human form was not known here, so when she took up her position between Cat and the ring leader, Roulette merely tilted her chin in the opposite direction, and announced the first bout.

It ended rather quickly, which is not customary for the first. Typically, the fighters are more evenly matched, so as to draw out some of the initial interest as the night begins. But the poor humanoid stood no chance against a Hellgrammite, armed with barbs and ready to pounce, shred, and tear flesh apart. I wagered back then that no human would ever be able to take down such a superior creature.

(I was wrong of course, and in my error, I eventually discovered some… it is difficult to phrase… _stimulation_ is not quite right, but noting that Alexandra would defeat a Hellgrammite, even so early in her career…

As if I had not already been in love before.)

Again, much too fast, and back to the night of the bout (Alex has sometimes told me I tend to drone on in stories, but that is because I am not delivering a final report, _Alexandra_!).

After the Hellgrammite summarily dispatched the humanoid, the boy from Starhaven returned to my dock to alert me that my fight would come after the next, as if he believed I might have some difficulty counting to three. The guests walked by my dock and looked me over, apparently less interested in someone who looked like them than they were Jemm, with his towering stature and magenta skin, as well as the glimmering gem stone in his forehead.

The second battle was about to commence within the cage when I met him.

“You seem oddly calm for someone about to walk into a cage match for the first time.”

I did not respond right away, merely looked up from where I sat in a folded-out chair, observing the start of the fight before me. This was no even match, probably less even than the first. The previous bout had left the humanoid dazed and bleeding, her arm dislocated and her torso punctured from the Hellgrammite’s pointed barb.

“Don’t want to talk?” he asked, smirking over his champagne glass. “Or… _can't_ talk?”

He was irrefutably attractive by Earth’s standards—broad shoulders, a strong jaw, enough stubble upon his cheeks for it to seem unintentional, but, with the cut of his suit and the gleam of his watch, I knew such casual ruggedness was likely more manufactured than natural. His presence at the Warehouse meant he was nothing, and the smile on his face meant he was scum. But he would not leave me be, studying me, leering at me, as if I were his next puzzle to solve. He seemed uninterested in the fight going on behind him, even when one of the aliens was thrown against the cage bars, jolting as he hit them.

A metal allergy? Or more likely, a forcefield, what with the type of strength the humans were attempting to contain in that barred golden castle.

“Of all the ones here… you look most like a fighter.”

I turned at that, intrigued, for he had been the first to suggest such. Other eyes rolled over me and onward, looking instead toward beefier arms and multi-colored skin-tones, to black eyes or multiple eyes or creatures with tails—they were exotic, and I was plain.

I had come to recognize that privilege in my own time, knowing, for instance, that a young boy from Starhaven would never want to work in my coffee shop, even if I offered him the job. Even if we shared an alien camaraderie, I benefited from my appearance, and M’gann her ability to shift. The Starhaven boy had no such refuge. But I think that is why the man took such an interest in me at the start. Because I did look human. Attractive enough, something for him to parade around, if I had agreed. I piqued his interest, and it was difficult thenceforth.

“Your fellow revelers beg to differ,” I responded, noting the bets flashing overhead as the screens updated, each fight indicating the odds and results of previous battles, indicating the terrible odds with which I was currently set. Someone _had_ placed a bet on me, and I wager that someone was Cat. Even if she had no desire to profit off of such an industry, it would work in our favor, as we had previously discussed, if she claimed me early.

“I fear I have not drawn much confidence in my skill.”

“And what skills do you possess, for close combat?” he asked, crossing his forearms over his chest, eyeing me in that uncomfortable way that made the suit over my skin shift, as if I were moving beneath it, as if I could shed the exterior that he found so fascinating and leave it behind, content to clothe myself in raiment his eyes had never seen. He had not even touched me, and yet I felt tainted _._

“I do feel that surprise will work in my favor,” I chanced, looking beyond his shoulder toward Jemm’s dock, where spectators had gathered round to take pictures with their phones. “They have pitted me against a telepath, a descendant of the H'ronmeerca, the Saturnian warriors. Their psychic blasts are legendary in battle lore.”

“Well, I think that just made up my mind as to final bets for the evening,” he said, finally turning from me to call over the boy from Starhaven. “Mitch!” he yelled, snapping and pointing to the space before him with a pompous authority that seemed bombastic and tiresome. “Why don’t we put a 100k on grey eyes here.”

“A… a hundred?”

“You have a problem with counting out whole numbers, StarChild?”

“No, Mr. Lord, I just… the odds…”

“Are in my favor tonight,” he grinned smugly and smacked the Starhaven kid on the shoulder. “What’s her name?”

“She’s just listed under ‘green’, sir.”

“Green? Interesting…”

I’d moved closer to the pair of them, compelled almost, by his sudden fascination with me.

“You mean… like this green?” he’d asked, and whipped one of the long chemical sticks from his side, a collapsible one, the sickly, green glow emitted from the inside hidden from prying eyes by the darkened metal shell on the exterior. I was disoriented enough by the wave of nausea that hit me upon the stick’s extraction that when he made a grab for me, I was unable to pull away. He brought me close, much too close, and held that stick over my skull, the green light burning my eyes, shooting crisp, sharp pains through my head. It was so immediate and unexpected that I cried out, and he released me instantly.

“No… not green,” he mumbled, low enough that only I could hear. “Grey though. Dark and light altogether at once. Grey like justice, don’t you think?”

“I am unaccustomed to decent human _justice_ ,” I said, taking a step away from him.

“Justice is universal, and rarely ever decent in my experience. I do apologize,” he said, extending his hands and sheathing the green weapon, though he did not look contrite. “I had only supposed…”

“You had no right!” I snapped at him, feeling his phantom grip round my arm, feeling clarity return in the absence of his glowing green battering stick.

“An experiment, and I… I confess I used you as a control.”

“You should get back to your evening, sir,” I seethed, disliking the glint of victory I saw in his eyes. “You do have a fare sum riding on my performance.”

“That I do, Miss Green, or Grey, if you prefer.”

“I don’t.”

“Very well, then,” he said, bowing slightly as he took his leave, as if he could tell… as if he _knew_ … that I was more than what I seemed. “I look forward to your bout.”

I nearly wanted to lose and self-sabotage the entire evening just to wipe that smugness from his face. In hindsight, it might have saved me a lot of trouble, if I had gotten out then, and we had come at the bouts from another angle. It would have saved Cat worry, and M’gann terror, and Alex—I could never have known then, but it would have saved Alex hours of uncertainty and inner battles of worthiness.

But I didn’t know anything beyond my fight with Jemm, and my alliance with Cat, and my dedication to M’gann.

I didn’t know, that at the end of the night, I would become Maxwell Lord’s white whale.

 

 

* * *

 

 

By the time I stepped into the ring, I knew that I would win the fight. Not without some difficulty, mind you, but there was never any doubt in my mind that I would emerge from the cage the victor.

Jemm was similar to Mr. Lord, bombastic and boastful, though he was not as cunning, relying far too much on his telepathy to aid him when he should have been more focused on a multi-pronged attack. M’gann is the only fighter he had faced that he had not beaten, and he had been fighting with Roulette for nearly two years by the time our bout commenced.

Roulette announced him in her suggestive manner, Jemm, Master of the Faceless Hunters and Conqueror of the Twelve Worlds, and I had to staunch my sneer to maintain a convincing show. The so-called “faceless hunters” were nothing more than a group of—what is it that you call Winn, Alexandra?— _dorky_ Saturnians with access to advanced technology and a bit of telepathy. Their primary power came through physical contact, for they were able to absorb the energetic properties of anything they touched and then repurpose that energy into targeted energy blasts, all stemming from those nonsensical gems implanted into their foreheads (it is important to note that, as a race descended from the ancient Martian diaspora, the Saturnians cosmetically added the gems to their foreheads to distinguish their race from that of their ancestors. There is no biological need for such a piece, only vanity).

I knew all of this and much more about Jemm, and he only supposedly knew what I had indicated upon my registration sheet, should the Starhaven lad have given him the same courtesy he extended to me. Nowhere upon the forms did it state that I had to be truthful, so, if there was any sense of decorum about these fights—which, surprisingly, I found that there was—my falsehoods would not be held against me.

So no one knew, none save M’gann, that Jemm, Master of the Faceless Hunters and Conqueor of the Twelve Worlds, was to be pitted against High General Astra In-Ze, First Born of her House and Arclominian of the First Order, Lord Markswoman of the Elite Brigadiers, Soldiers of the Bastion Range, First-Graduate of the Academy at Kandor and Champion of Streld, Summer-Bringer of the Yygderns, Victor of the Thanagar Spars for five years running (the champion to hold the title for the longest successive streak, until my promotion, and hand-to-hand battery off-world was frowned upon by the Kryptonian magistrates), and on, and on, and on…

If one were to read the list of titles I had acquired throughout my career, it could function as dramatic monologue more so than introduction—Alexandra, I am not _bragging_ , I am giving the people _context_ , please—so it was rather fortunate for me, the first time around, that I did not reveal myself to the spectators, or to Roulette, and especially to Max Lord.

Jemm was incidental, our fight a blip on the proverbial radar, but I will not keep you in suspense much longer. Alexandra oftentimes indicates her interest whenever I tell stories in which I, to put it frankly, _kick ass_.

“Facing off against a scrappy wench from Daxam—”

My stomach turned again.

“—Lady Green.”

Jemm was used to the bouts, so he came out strong, immediate, hailing blow after blow despite his poor assessment of me as an opponent. I side-stepped with ease, employing a bit of superspeed (not so much as to run circles around the alien, but enough to avoid the opening attack, which seemed to shock the crowd behind me). Upon my first dodge, Jemm sailed past me and into the cage, jittering off the, yes, I felt it behind my hands, tingling my skin and shooting discomfiting twinges along my nerves—the _forcefield_.

He rammed into the barrier so hard it sent him flying back, not hurting him, but no doubt embarrassing a being who had grown accustomed to winning swiftly. I stood just out of reach, smirking at him, arms loose at my sides, stance spread and centered and ready for the first invasion—which did not come. Instead, a bolt of concentrated energy, golden and brewing like acid air, shot toward my torso. I dodged again, allowing the energy to bounce against the forcefield and dissolve to nothing.

Cat-and-mouse, the spectators had seen before. Who will tire the other out more quickly, or which will falter first in their cunning evasions?

Jemm roared and staggered to his feet, trotting over in galumphing strides to where I squared my shoulders and raised my hands in preparation for battle. A strike, and an evasion, then a counterstrike, for I was small and limber, and he was large and slow. An uppercut, square against his jaw, and with my strength at full power, he went sailing upward several feet, landing in a heap across the cage.

Screams and shouts of derision followed Jemm’s sloppy recovery. Drinks were being thrown at the cage and liquid seemed to be raining around us, dripping over the invisible wall of the forcefield. I heard no shouts in my favor, believing Cat to have remained quiet, believing Max, in all his general mystery at the time, to have continued watching until I gained the upper hand.

In a move that I had not planned, I followed up with that first attack, a swift kick to his gut, darting over with my superspeed, and then an immediate grab at his chest plate, in which I bashed his head into the floor. He grappled with me above him but I squirmed away, keeping my eyes on the hot, glowing jewel at his forehead. I dare not think of what the spectators might think of me, weathering an energy blast of that magnitude with little scarring, so I eliminated the potential for questions by removing the source of the problem. With a quick blast from my vision and a two-pronged attack with both hands, I allowed Jemm to cover me with his weight while I gouged both eyes with my left hand and went for the jewel with my right.

After some wailing and flailing on his part, I emerged with one sparkly, blood-drenched blue jewel, and another slimy, squishy Saturnian eyeball. Jemm howled, high and grating, the heel of his meaty, pinkish hand rubbing against the gaping hole where his eye had once been, where his jeweled power source had been woven into membranes encasing his skull. The eyeball might have been, as Alexandra informs me, _a bit much_ , but I dared not try the barbarian at his full-strength when I knew he would come for me with his telepathy.

Which he did immediately, once he saw me throw his eye upon the cage floor and grind it to slime beneath my boot.

I felt him in my memories, searching for my greatest pain, searching for the torture I could inflict upon myself. But that is the remarkable thing about one who has withstood trauma—my time in Rozz was hell at its most severe, so any memory he might manipulate, any sensation or emotion he might heighten, could never be worse than what I had already lived through. He latched onto my most recent loss, for it was still so fresh. Thankfully, I had not had time to mourn it, to reconcile it, and so all he did was compound the anger I harbored, which fueled his undoing.

_That’s a little patronizing, don’t you think? You do that a lot, you know?_

Alex.

Alex in my head, right before me.

_How could you do this?! You complete_ _liar_ _! I trusted you and you—you lied to me!_

“Hypocrite!” I shouted in Kryptonian, and felt the grasp on my memories waver, felt Jemm’s hold loosen as he heard the ancient phrases, the language long dead of a noble race

Alexandra Danvers.

Liar, Alex... what she had done—perhaps not from the start, but from when she took me, and I knew I loved her—she knew exactly what she was doing and who I was to her.

_Liar_.

The word burned within my veins, as if gasoline had replaced my blood and had been set alight by the recollection, by the rawness of the memory Jemm’s powers were exacerbating.

_I know of a c-cowardly, traitorous g-g-general who turned her back on her government, who k-killed magistrates and was locked away. She abandoned her_ _family!_

“Aaaaghh!”

I couldn’t stop it, for all I saw before me was a faceless body, not Alex, not Jemm, but my own losses manifest and awaiting confrontation. I do not know exactly what transpired from that moment forward, only that I at once felt wet, and breathless, and by the end of it all, Jemm looked close to dead and I had to be taken down by the guards outside the cages. M’gann called it blinding, unbridled rage. Cat claimed I underwent some change, some inexplicable episode that catapulted me from mere superhuman to berserker.

But I could not see for the red: Jemm’s blood on my hands and the sands of Streld and the red brick of the apartment all around, with Alex panting beneath me, holding my gaze as I rocked above her, whispering I love yous, while she looked back at me and kept her silence.

I landed so many blows and felt my eyelashes sizzle, felt that boiling heat erupt with no target. I heard nothing shatter, but through the haze, I heard screams, the crunch of metal, the awkward stampede of shoes not meant for running. Wetness rained down upon me and mingled with the heat from my eyes, wrapping me in columns of steam. The grunt and tromp of boots sounded, the clicks and fastenings of arms, all the while heat poured from my eyes and I roasted metal and flesh to charred, coruscated whisps of nothing.

_She’s my sister, and you’re not getting anywhere_ near _her._

_Tell me where—_

_You swore by Rao!_

_That was before I knew—_

_…it’s gonna suck for Kara to know her aunt fucked her sister just to get to her._

Perhaps I shouted again. Perhaps I wailed. Perhaps I dismantled the forcefield, and the cage, and blew a hole into the top of the warehouse and brought lightning down upon my cage. I had not intended this, never wanted it, thought I had prepared with M’gann’s periodic invasions. But battlelust overran my senses, and I knew little else than vengeance against my memories.

If I could burn them all away I could. Better to be numb than this pain.

And soon enough, I felt the numbness. Beyond the watery curtain of screaming, I heard the discharge of several firearms. I head them clatter against cage walls, and I felt a sharp sting along my lower back, and I heard a single voice, deeply concerned, hollering above the melee:

“Don’t _kill_ her you idiots!”

I wasn’t certain I could feel my legs. I wondered if my spinal cord had been severed. I wondered if I had been killed. I wondered if I was in the desert still, avoiding sniper fire, for I felt nothing but heat, pain, and devastation.

“She’s our only specimen, worth more than your _lives_ , you pigs.”

I couldn’t move. Didn’t move. Felt the wet, the sloshing heaviness of sore muscles and a body leaking life’s blood, felt careful hands turn me over on my front and drag my hair away from my face. Conventionally attractive by Earth’s standards, I thought again, and the glint in his eyes had faded from interest to concern.

Not a good man, I remembered, fearing for my body, my life, and hoping in flashes that M’gann had gotten Cat out in time, that Connie would find the owner’s manual I’d left in case of emergencies, and that, in the end… Alex would be everything I could never be for Kara.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

I awoke to sterility.

Walls were white and monitors were beeping around me. My limbs, heavy, my back, aching and twinging at every jutter of my hips. Two corners, two cameras, one door, glass and powered by hydraulics, controlled and locked by the interface within the wall. My body, covered in a soft white sheet. Stainless steel instruments, leads and IVs injected—wait—I had needles, needles _in my skin_ , my body pierced, I… I had… had…

A panic attack.

Or, close enough to it that I repeated my mania from the cage, but on a slightly smaller scale.

No powers. None. No… no advantage, save my wits, save my knowledge, save my training, save—or perhaps I had overreacted.

My breathing steadied as I analyzed the situation.

Even without my powers, I had known instantly where the interface to the door would be located. I knew of field medicine, how to extract each needle with care. I knew how to navigate buildings and docks and ships in which I had never been, keeping to side corridors, back stairwells, using windows for reference… I… I could still fight as well as any human.

I was a soldier.

And I was getting _out_.

I slid from the reclining bed and set to removing the sensors and shutting off the monitors. As gently as I could, I rotated, examining my back and the large, grotesque bruise that blossomed out from around a square patch of gauze roughly two inches square. When I removed it, the skin was pasty and sticky, a mere abrasion, but I did not think that the wound had begun as such, especially considering the size and shape of the bruising. My abdomen was undamaged, but I would be walking with a limp—which would make the next part of my task far more difficult.

I rose from the bed and ripped the sheet into something that would suffice as cover without inhibiting my range of motion. I walked, gently, toward the glass door, and peered down either end of the corridor. To the left, light and openness, large windows and a chance to get my bearings. To the right, more hallways, darkness, but likely, the exit. But I could have no sense of what floor I was on, or how much time had passed, or if I were even still in National City… a bluff might be my only chance, even if it resulted in my recapture… I would know more upon my second escape, which I _would_ do, for I—I could not remain powerless forever?

Had I—had I damaged myself beyond repair, physically this time?

No time to mull over such depressive thoughts, if I had any chance of getting out of the strange building. And so, with as much caution as I could manage, I padded back toward the bed and took a seat, placed my head in my hands, and collected my senses. The checklist of things I needed to do was growing, but I could not know what their guard rotation—did they have a guard rotation?—were they a _they_ or a him or a her?—singular, plural, whomever? With so many unknown variables, recapture was certain, but I could not remain in a place that could pierce my skin.

I could not, no, _would_ not return to somewhere like Rozz.

The angle from the camera… the clasping lead that had been on my index finger… the needles, the screws, if I turned my body at the right angle, it would block everything while I worked, removing latches and unfastening as quickly as I could.

Soon enough, I’d successfully unscrewed the IV pole apart and into two separate metal sticks. I hurled them in either hand directly at the corner cameras and hit them true, javelin-like, bursting the glass and shooting tiny sparks into the air as the camera mounts drooped from ineffectual cords and sparks flew toward the halogen bulbs of the white ceiling. I sprinted toward the side panels and used the tiny metal instruments to dismantle the hidden wall mount, and then to surge the palm-reading panel—such primitive security measures—so that the hydraulics would release and the door would slide open to allow my exit. I snatched up one of the dismantled poles from the IV and clutched the tied sheet tighter round my chest, jogging toward the light, toward the window, toward…

A balcony.

A balcony on the fiftieth floor of a _Rao-blessed_ skyscraper.

_Blekhtl,_ I swore, noting the early hour, the sun in the east, the lack of traffic, uncharacteristic for a weekday, the heaviness in my feet (still no flight), but that blast of sunlight, those beaming rays, they hit my skin and my back ached less. No speed, no lasers, but my hurts were healing thanks to Earth’s yellow star.

Until again, the _Rao-blessed_ security guards showed, three at the door, muscular and stocky, slow, but undoubtedly strong, and so I was forced to fight _again_ , injured and scared as I was.

Best make it quick.

I charged and swung with the metal pole and met a forearm, a shoulder, block after block as the men crowded me back into the large, open room with a glass dome, stretching three stories high, a chandelier above, plush couches and soft rugs underfoot, a fire place, a table set for breakfast—

Why weren’t they fighting back?

No strikes, no chokeholds, just grunts and calls for me to stand down as they moved in, cutting off my space, my reach shorter, my movements stilted, one hand on my arm, another round my waist, a pair of biceps securing my kicking legs and lifting me until—

“Gentlemen, please.”

I stopped struggling momentarily to look up and reposition my grip on the pole, to make sure no one was holding a gun above us all. That man from the bout (who’d likely made money off of me, if 100k had been compounded against my initially terrible odds) stood at the top of a landing above us, his hands resting against the center platform that separated the two staircases leading down in clean, metallic lines to the floor.

“Can we get her a robe, please?”

The men released me but I held fast to my poor weapon, taking in my captor as he sauntered down the stairs in a dark purple robe of his own. His hair was mussed, blue eyes twinkling malevolently. He smiled and gestured toward a raised platform surrounded by windows, where a dining table had been set for two in the large, open living space. There was a bouquet of yellow flowers arranged in crystal sitting in the middle of the table. Cloth napkins, rainbows of chopped, fresh fruit, and individual kettles were situated neatly at each table setting. Golden chargers sat under ceramic plates. Gold-accented chafers heated by Serno flames had been assembled on another cloth-covered table near the window, hiding waffles and bacon and eggs and all sorts of foods that I most certainly needed, considering the wave of fatigue that overtook me as I looked upon the meal.

“Breakfast? You look like a mimosa kind of girl.”

“Let me go,” I rasped, feeling the clogging taste of chalk and cotton against my dry throat. It ached low in my neck, difficult to swallow… had I… had I had a tube down my throat?

Had I eaten _at all_ in the time that I’d been here?

How… how long had I been here?

“You’re still injured.”

I scoffed. “The locks on the door do not inspire confidence in your medical services.”

“Locks you circumvented easily enough. I’ll make a note of that.”

“Who are you?” I sneered at him. “What do you want?”

He smiled again, gesturing toward a woman in a lab coat who extended a silken robe. He and the security officers averted their eyes while I struggled with the sleeves and the ties, feeling silly and exposed with the short hem at my thighs, the deep V down my bruised chest. The woman took the sheet away but made no movement for the metal IV pole I’d been using to bludgeon her coworkers with.

Intriguing.

“Decent?” the man called, rearranging his own purple robe as his eyes ran up my body with a cursory glance. He stared instead at my face, my eyes, which hopefully radiated every ounce of disdain I was feeling for the situation as it played out.

I straightened as best I could with the pain in my back, moving one arm across my chest. “…perhaps by your planet’s standards.”

“Good,” he said, daring to move closer. I brandished the pole before me but he made a quick hand motion, and his men stood down. “Keep it, if it will make you feel safer.”

“Your answering my questions will make me feel _safer_ ,” I spat.

“Oh, of course,” he kept smiling despite my obvious discomfort, which earned him no favors in my regard. “Maxwell Lord, CEO of Lord Technologies. And you asked me what I wanted.”

“Yes.”

“Quite simple,” he said, turning his back on me and taking two steps up to the raised platform with high, clear windows, pulling out one chair and motioning at the seat as he crossed to the opposite end of the table and took the other.

“I would like nothing more in this world than to have breakfast with a Kryptonian. Fortunately for me, you just so happen to be one. Coffee?”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> little longer chappie cuz I missed my weekly update and I'm :/ really wishing I had more time these days to do stuff i enjoy, like work on this and maybe watch television. this holiday weekend is the first time i've sat down to watch a show in six weeks :/ even if i still LIKED supergirl, i wouldn't have the time to WATCH it 
> 
> I do have a vacay coming up, but it's travel, so idk about time to write as much... will try for next chapter next Sunday, as we'll be coming down off of act II and into the final bits within another 3 chapters or so!!!
> 
> hope you liked this nonsense of astra's struggle, my darling baby <3


	12. Chapter 12

Say what you will about Maxwell Lord, the man makes a damn good cup of coffee. With a Gaggia machine at his disposal, it would be quite the feat to muck up. When I pulled the lever down and watch the crema congregate at the top of the tiny ceramic cup, I lifted the brew to my nose and inhaled… of all the violence and uncertainty surrounding me, I could draw comfort in this small scent, of coffee, succor in liquid form. I prayed Han would not be all that angry that I had missed opening, for by the tilt of the sun and the headline of the paper, I deduced that it was Sunday morning, a full 36 hours after I’d fought in Roulette’s ring.

I shoveled another forkful of eggs into my mouth when he finally collected himself and proceeded to speak (he did not seem like a man easily caught off-guard, so I found some small pleasure in making his jaw drop).

“You can eat,” he said simply.

I placed the cutlery at my side and reached for the napkin, recalling the lessons of the Academy for State Dinners and the High Council’s Ball. There was significantly less bowing and fewer utensils, but I had learned that etiquette between cultures was markedly similar.

“An excellent observation,” I muttered, raking another ten slices of bacon onto my plate. If it indeed was Sunday, and I had been without food for over a day, it would explain my appetite. I’d already emptied his chafer of strawberry-stuffed crepes and had helped myself to two bowls of garlic grits, washed down, of course, with three cups of coffee from the French Press and two glasses of whole milk. Then, the two shots of espresso perfection from the Gaggia.

“For a human,” I remarked.

“You just don’t… look… like you eat like this with any degree of regularity. Unless of course… your powers are linked to your metabolism, which would explain your figure.”

I raised my head from my plate and cast a dubious look across the length of the table, my vision hurtling over the centerpiece of bright flowers and zeroing in on his semi-bewildered expression. His repose was pompous, backlit and pleasingly disheveled in a way that made me assume he had hosted many an overnight guest. The robe of shimmery, deep purple material was drawn tight over his expansive chest, one tuft of hair stuck at an awkward angle from the crown of his head.

Sitting like a king upon a throne in the blue of a morning sky, I’m sure he’d have cut quite the intimidating figure if I had been anything other than what I was.

Which is to say that I was not intimidated in the slightest.

“If there is one thing I have learned on this planet, it is that not everything is as simple as it seems,” I responded cryptically.

“Like beautiful women with healthy appetites and heat vision beyond Kelvin registries?”

My brows rose of their own accord as I curled one foot beneath me in the dining chair. I brought the mug to my lips and countered: “Like rich men who make power plays by kidnapping aliens with heat vision beyond Kelvin registries.”

He set his fork aside and brought his animated hands before him, smirking as he curled one set of fingers over the other. “Come now, this is hardly a kidnapping—”

“The restraints and the locked door do me no favors,” I said imperiously, holding his stare for one long moment in what I recognized immediately as the middle moves of our respective power plays.

The opening attack—if one might call breakfast such a thing—had been easily set: his courtesy was not disadvantageous to me. If he was to provide me with sustenance, I would not—what is the phrase, Alex?— _bite the hand that fed me_. And yet I could tell from his position across from me, the men guarding the doors, the wires and hydraulics and white-washed lines of his laboratory, that I was in an unfavorable position for a negotiation. He had me without my powers, weak, and no amount of Eggs Benedict and espresso could supplant a power drain like I had experienced two evenings prior.

I had no intention of playing into his hand, so I scoffed, rose from my position at the table and turned away from him. I stepped down from the platform where the table was raised, and made my way to the center of the room. The three men I’d scuffled with prior to eating converged in an instant, and so I pivoted back to Max and issued my most knowing glare.

“The guards do suggest some forcible seizure will take place, and yet you insist this is no kidnapping. I do wonder at your human interpretations of simple concepts.”

“I’d really hoped you would stay a while,” Max said, rising himself, placing frustrated hands on his hips. “After Roulette's little scuffle, you must have something you’d like to talk about.”

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“I think you might.”

“You want something from me and I would like my freedom. Might we skip the pleasantries and move on to your demands?”

“See,” Maxwell started, wagging his finger at my statement, as if it had been more telling a declaration than anything I’d previously said. “That’s a woman who gets down to business. A _Kryptonian_ woman, so let’s start with that.”

“Start with _what_ , human?”

“I want answers, and a show of good faith.”

“I have lost faith in many things, least of all humanity,” I responded bitterly.

I would not think of Alex, not here, nor would I link all of her connections and complications to my role in the bouts. This is exactly what Alex hadn’t wanted, involvement in something that would draw attention to Kara, even if all it came to was vague threats from an unknown power. In the end, it was more trouble than Kara needed in her position.

“I have nothing to say to you,” I repeated.

“Hadn’t you wondered how I overpowered you? How I was able to get you here, without your consent?” Max led. “Doesn’t that… unsettle you?”

“Ha!” I chuckled, brought a bruised hand to my lips and staunched my remaining amusement. I held my hand up for a moment, dismissive, superior, and could already tell I had the man thunderstruck. He was someone accustomed to being _revered_ , worshiped even, and so it was my duty to bring him low like the debased, power-hungry manipulator that he was.

“You wish to intimidate me? Here? Powerless as I am? Again, I think you must have the wrong idea about… many things,” I answered him. “My insincerest apologies, Mr. Lord, but I do not much care that you have me here. I’ll admit to a fleeting sense of self-preservation, but I have lost so much in my life I doubt that you could take anything worthwhile, no matter what you do to me.”

“Why do you think I would do anything to you?”

“Because this is not the first time I’ve awoken to wires in my body, trapped in a cell from which I’ve tried to escape.”

His eyes narrowed slightly, and he crossed his arms over his chest as he took in my reply.

“Care to elaborate?”

“I’ve already gifted you with too much information. For the longest time I thought myself invincible on this planet. Perhaps I find it refreshing to know there is someone, or—”

I stalked closer to him with measured paces, looked him up and down, then reached for his hand. I was no stranger to seduction, or negotiation, but running my fingers over his soft knuckles and shining nails revealed a man who had never seen battle, who had rarely curled his fingers into a fist. I felt the corners of my lips pull up into a tight grin as my fingers encircled his wrist. “Perhaps I find it refreshing to be without that power, and for someone else to… to…” I whispered as he leaned into listen more closely.

“…to take it from you?” he asked.

(Alex, darling, you’re being unreasonable and retroactively jealous. You know what I did next, so do stop sulking).

“Y-yes… or…”

He was looming over me with his head ducked down and slightly off balance, trying to get into my personal space, which is when I acted.

I tightened my grip and twisted his arm in an instant, wriggling beneath him so that his wrist was contorted behind his back and I could steer him anyway I chose. One press against the elbow and I could snap his forearm off using leverage alone.

The rattle of guns drawn from holsters echoed as I wedged myself behind his bulk, twisting tighter, forcing him onto his toes as he resisted and grunted, trying to retain that cool air of casual disinterest that was rapidly deteriorating with my grip on his arm.

“However…I think it was less a person and more of a _something_ that brought me low, upon that table in your little white room,” I purred, twisting his arm in my grip so he knew, that even without my powers, I would not be intimidated. 

“You are no warrior, Mr. Lord.”

“Put the guns down!” he snapped at his men, recognizing that yes, even though I was powerless, I was no longer a target—not with his beefy body twisted before me like a human shield. “And you…” his fingers curled round into a fist as he struggled fruitlessly. Perhaps I did not have strength, but leverage and skill, which I believe was something he was far more used to wielding than to being at the mercy of. “I know you’re working with the Martian.”

My breath hitched in an instant but I did not release him, instead gripping all the tighter, those nails biting into the bulk of his forearm.

“You know nothing.”

“And not the green, like she shows herself,” Max babbled, my hand loosening ever so slightly, as I prayed for him not to finish his thought, as I hoped, hoped for the first time since Alex left, since I discovered Kara was alive, since I committed myself to M’gann, my best friend—

“The _White_ Martian, the fugitive,” he growled, finally twisting enough that I released him, tossing him across the plush, geometric carpet with as much strength as I could muster. He grabbed the lapels of his robe and straightened it, then rubbed his twisted wrist with his other hand, grimacing all the while. “The one with a bounty on her head, out…” he waved off behind me, his fingers dancing in the air to indicate the space above us all, beyond his overlarge windows, beyond his skyscrapers, beyond his planet. “… out there,” he said. “And that you would align yourself with those monsters tells me more about you than conversations over breakfast ever could.”

“If you alert the galaxies to her presence, your planet will surely perish,” I snapped.

“And you along with it.”

“I told you, I have very little left to lose,” I retorted. I had already lost Alex, been restricted from seeing Kara, and had been attacked at my own shop. I could fight for my workers and for M’gann, for Cat, but he could not know about them, certainly, hadn’t the foresight or the depth to probe my memories and use what I held dear against me… if I had to remain aloof and disconnected, I would.

“Somehow I doubt that, General Astra In-Ze,” he smiled, waving a hand over his shoulder at his guards. I stood stock still and held his gaze, wondering what he was playing at. “Leave us.”

“But sir—”

“This woman spent the better part of three decades in jail,” Max said, sharing little by little of what he knew of me. “Fort Rozz, was it?”

He did know of my background, somehow, but I needed to know how much. And even in my anger, my fearful rage, I wondered if I could draw more from his arrogance: “You… you know _nothing_ —”

“Of a woman sentenced for killing a guard? No, that was your husband, Non-Ur, was it?” Max tilted his head to the side, his gaze piercing, and though I did not fear for my physical well being any longer, I knew, with unsettling urgency, that information was far more powerful than broken bones. “Is he still in the picture? He was sentenced, too.”

“You seem to have all the answers,” I bit back. “You tell me.”

He gazed at me once more, his eyes lecherously traveling the length of my body. I felt far more exposed now, in this robe, shrouded in this faux pageantry of comfort—I’d seen enough of human media to draw my own conclusions about this constructed scenario, a _morning after,_ in which he was attempting to paint me like some conquest.

(Calm down Alexandra, I’m merely setting the scene, you know I didn’t… right, yes, but I hardly think you have any cause to arrest him _now_ , for something that happened years ago. You know how well that turned out the last time you held him without a warrant).

Anyway, the long and short of the morning revealed that Maxwell Lord had information on me. I did not know how much, or how he had acquired it at the time, and so I was left in a rather precarious position. I dare not reveal anymore than he already had access to, and yet, if I was to discover exactly how or why he had this information, it would take some careful confessions and a bit of fanciful story-telling on my end. Much of what he’d fed me thus far had tied me directly to Rozz or to M’gann, and even to Non, but little had been said of my family. No jokes had been made as to my aptitude for handling an antique espresso machine, or my knowledge of various breakfast foods. It was merely a hunch, but I believed Maxwell knew little of my life on Earth beyond Roulette’s fights and her devious machinations. He knew only of Miss Martian’s wide and terrified eyes when I was shot with what I would soon come to know as _kryptonite_ , that terrible green (or red) substance that would render me powerless. He only knew M’gann’s battling of Roulette’s guards, of his own men, as she fought her way over my prone form while guard after guard attempted to pull my body from the ring, after I’d burned it all to ash.

The guards exited and Max took a seat on an overlarge couch, square and black and a perfect complement to the steel-and-glass angles all about us. Silver lines plunged from staircase railings and semi-soft carpet streamed underfoot. I needed _out_ , but Max seemed to have all the time in the world.

“First off, I should thank you for winning me a fair sum of money at the last match,” he began.

“Somehow, I don’t think you need it.”

“True,” he acquiesced, “but I’m not so much a participant anymore.”

“In the betting?”

“Yes.”

“Then why… why are you there, if not to observe the fights?”

“Oh, I _observe_ ,” Max checked me, sipping from his overlarge travel mug of stainless steel. “But I am more scientist than spectator, with much more riding on those silly fights than whether or not one of you beats another to death.”

I clenched my teeth and kept my calm, though he was purposefully baiting me.

“You’ve made an alliance with Miss Martian,” he said plainly, setting his mug aside. “What spawned that?”

“That is none of your concern.”

“It is very much my concern—and all of humanity’s, I would argue—when two of the most powerful aliens to have ever landed upon this earth decide to team up against us.”

“Did you sustain a head injury in the fights Friday night as well?” I snapped. “We are pitted against each other like animals. We hardly have any quarrel with your people other than how poorly you treat us.”

“Well that’s the catch, isn’t it?” Max said. “For all the Earth knows, we’ve got one—count him, _one_ —alien on our side. The rest of you? What’s to stop you from organizing an attack? It’s happened before, but your fellow Kryptonian up Metropolis way decided to intervene. What happens if he can’t stop, or, even worse, doesn’t want to stop—”

“—the next attack?” I finished for him, wondering at my own power drain, to what had happened that might have rendered me normal once again, or, as normal as I once was on my own planet. “Your Superman is human in his loyalties. He will never not fight for your side, for he is simply a starry-eyed child.”

“Do I sense some animosity within the ranks?”

“I hardly see that man as Kryptonian when he knows nothing of his origins.”

“But he is powerful.”

“Judging from this room, so are you,” I answered. “It does not mean he—or you—is deserving of my respect.”

“I never asked for your respect, only your cooperation.”

“And if I refuse?”

Max remained silent, choosing that instant to lean back against the couch with his arms spread wide. “I’m only here to protect my people.”

“From what?”

“You,” he said, tilting his head to the side. “You know you almost killed everyone in that warehouse? That once you dismantled the forcefield, the place started blazing.”

“It is hardly my concern when those people chose to be there in the first place. Perhaps if humanity’s vices shifted toward something less barbaric, there would be little need for me to use such a power. I was fighting _for my life_.”

“You were out of control,” Max corrected. “The Saturnian, was it? There are plenty of alien species out there capable of mind-control. What if they get ahold of someone like you, or Superman, and turn you against us? What if they start pitting humans against _each other_?”

“I watch the news, Mr. Lord. Your people seem perfectly content tearing each other to shreds.”

“Nevertheless, this planet has become increasingly attractive to invaders—”

“ _Refugees_.”

“And it’s my job to look out for my best interests. If that means studying what we’re up against—”

“So you want to experiment on me?”

“I want to know all I can about the biggest threats to our planet,” Max amended diplomatically. “Experimentation sounds so _crass.”_

“That’s what you’re doing, but couching such words in the soft rhetoric of justification does not make your position any less cruel,” I seethed, having repeated this sentiment time and time again to leaders of the High Council. “Experimentation, study… I am not some object open to dissection, Mr. Lord.”

“No,” he said, standing from his position at the couch, making his slow, diabolic way toward me. “But that does not mean we couldn’t work together. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.”

“I have no interest in touching you unless it’s to rip your arm off.”

(Alex, release me! Why are you—oh? You liked it when I threatened…oh, yes, well perhaps we can remember that when we retire later? …wonderful).

“Really?” he murmured, close enough that I could smell the coffee on his breath. He had several inches on me as I stood barefoot in his expansive living area at the top of the skyscraper. And even though I was forced to look up at him, there was no respect lying dormant in my expression. Only contempt, disgust, revulsion—for I was likely not the first alien he’d taken into custody for study, but I was perhaps the first he’d disrobed and touched, the first whom he discovered was not at all anatomically dissimilar to his favored human paramours.

After such a large meal and the loss of my powers, I felt as if I would be sick.

“It might be in your best interest,” he mumbled, low again, fiddling with the tie of my robe, “to make some allies on this earth.”

I was shaking with rage and couldn’t stop myself. I landed a slap to his perfectly shadowed cheek, and then I spit my derision in his face. He grabbed my arm as I struggled, and despite my waning strength, there was no way I would not fight this man until my final breath.

(Yes, I know you think that’s hot, Alexandra, but I’m approaching the good part).

“Touch me without my consent again and I will break more than your arm,” I shouted, though my threat was muffled by hard banging on the large double doors of the apartment, shut tightly and positioned beneath both flights from the split staircase. One of the guards slipped through and banged the door behind him, but I would have recognized that glimpse of blond curl and put-upon impatience even without being able to see through walls.

“Mr. Lord, there’s a guest—”

“I’m _busy_ , Simmons—”

“She is insistent. She’s been harassing the front desk since we opened, and… I don’t know how she knows, but she’s asking for her.”

“Who?” Max asked.

“Her,” Simmons said, pointing at me. Max still held my arm in his angry grip and his eyes flashed between me and his guard, then cast a suspicious glance back toward the door.

“What do you mean she’s—who the hell is it?!”

“Cat Grant, sir.”

“Cat Grant? From the _Tribune_?”

“She has photos, sir… rather incriminating.”

“Of what, exactly?”

“You in the lab with…” Simmons once against nodded at me, which seemed to snap Max out of his rage. He dropped my arm and took a step back, straightened his robe, and ran a hand over his disheveled hair.

“And how exactly—”

“No idea. It was like someone took them and they were assisting you in the lab. Like they were right in there, _recording_ you—”

“That’s enough,” Max fumed, his face tinted an angry pink, his steel eyes gleaming outrageously. “Send her in.”

“Sir,” Simmons nodded deferentially, but I swear, beneath that professional exterior, the guard _winked_ at me, which admittedly threw me for a moment.

Until Cat Grant strode in with perfectly curled hair, a dress to kill, and heels that could grind Maxwell Lord into the dirt.

“Good morning, Max,” Cat chirped, taking in the airy apartment with an upturned nose and her endearing mix of patronization and charm. “Playing host to a reluctant guest, I see?”

“Just breakfast, Cat,” Max chimed. “Nothing so nefarious.”

“Not _yet_ ,” I growled, taking up my stance at Cat’s side.

Max crossed his arms over his chest and quickly put two and two together, likely factoring in yet another upset in his original plan. “I… see,” he muttered.

“As you said, Mr. Lord,” I countered. “Allies.”

“And it seems you’ve chosen your side,” he responded.

“The side that could ruin you?” I chanced, watching as Cat Grant scrolled through photo after photo of my immobile body on Max’s examination table.

“How did you get those?” Max growled.

“Anonymous source,” Cat chirped.

“Those were obtained illegally.”

“So was she,” Cat argued, stepping between me and Max. “Come after her again, and these will be on the front page of the _Trib_.”

“I didn’t break any laws, none that currently exist, anyway,” Max protested. We turned in unison, and began walking away.

“No one will care!” Max’s voice rose to desperate, angry levels as Simmons held the door open for us both, but I had the strange feeling that the man who regarded his boss with as much contempt as myself and Cat was not Simmons at all.

“You’re not protected here, you know! Nobody cares about alien welfare!” Max shouted after us. I turned to look at Cat, and at M’gann in Simmons’s form, and looked back over my shoulder at a billionaire whose morning plans had gone drastically awry.

“You’re wrong, Mr. Lord,” I said simply, releasing a grateful breath as the door closed behind me.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“Uh, Mom?”

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“Who are those ladies? And is Ms. Ashley here for a sleepover?”

I looked down at the robe Max Lord had given me and scoffed, wondering how far the shop was from Cat’s penthouse and whether I’d be able to grab some clothing that didn’t make me feel tainted.

“They’re friends, Carter.”

“But Mom…” Carter paused, leaning closer to his mom’s side as he sat atop a tall stool at the bar of their immaculate kitchen with marble counter tops and white-washed cabinets. The sun streamed in through sheer curtains on a blissful Sunday morning, and I could almost forget that I'd spent the last 24 hours in a sterilized medbay with Rao-knows-what sticking into me. “You don’t _have_ friends.”

“Don’t be silly, of course I have friends,” Cat protested, sliding her fingers atop the plastic Ziploc baggie she’d just stuffed a handful of carrots into for her son. “Where’s your lunch box?”

“Uh—”

“Did you leave it on the coffee table again?”

“I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s okay, we just don’t want anything to spoil over night. Go grab it, Jacob’s mom will be here in ten minutes.”

“Yes ‘mam,” Carter responded, slipping from the stool as M’gann and I watched with varying expressions of admiration at the way Cat softened to puddy around her son: the hair ruffles, the patient explanations, with just enough of Cat’s characteristic expectancy that she straddled authority and kindness with grace. Even here, on Earth, rearing one’s children took a different tone than it did on Krypton, and it was a marvel to see.

“He’ll be staying with a family friend for a few days, and then his father for the first week before Christmas,” Cat explained, peeking her head round the wall of the corridor down which Carter escaped. “Which is far away from National City, Roulette, Lord Technologies, and any other massive corporations that I find myself at odds with.” She placed both hands on the countertop and bowed her head for a moment, shutting her eyes and then digging the heel of her palm deep into one socket.

“Are you quite well?” I asked.

“Yes, I’m… I’m okay,” Cat answered, huffing out a breath that suggested she was anything but.

“Cat,” M’gann tried, rising from her seat at the bar. “What can I get you? Coffee? Breakfast?”

Cat held a hand up and shook her head briskly. “Let’s… let’s just get Carter safely on the road before we get into all of this. I’d rather him not think I bring random women off the streets for sleepovers,” she quipped, turning her eyes back to me.

I still felt rather slow and bumbling without my powers, as if sand had filled my bones and I was swimming through pudding.

“Although, that would put to rest whatever blackmail Veronica thought she had against me.”

“She had leverage other than… than threatening your life?” I asked.

“She was going to relay information about a relationship I had several years ago. She thought she could ruin my career, which is far more important than my life. My brand is… it does more good than I ever could,” Cat spoke so sincerely I might’ve taken her for a sentimental woman. Then Carter walked back in the room with his backpack and lunchbox, electric blue and lime-green sneakers laced in double-knots and hair tucked neatly under a National City Rooks’ hat.

“Jacob will be here in five minutes,” Carter said, pulling out his dark blue Blackberry.

“I’ll walk you down,” Cat insisted, side-stepping the counter and acknowledging the pair of us with little more than a head nod.

It didn’t take super-hearing to eavesdrop on Carter’s frustration, especially while Cat struggled with his rolling luggage in the front hallway. But he was a polite kid, and wouldn’t begin complaining to his mother in front of guests, which was quite the feat for a 9-year-old:

“I don’t understand why I have to leave,” Carter grumbled.

“Didn’t you want to go skiing with Jacob?”

“Well, yeah, but not for a whole _week_ ,” Carter murmured. “I just got out of school, and… I don’t know, I thought we were gonna watch _The Grinch_ again.”

Again, no x-ray vision, but I could picture him shrugging, could picture Cat’s eyes welling up despite her attempts to maintain her composure, and I could see that rounded, slightly bulging chin with just a hint of baby-fat tipping down to stare at his shoes.

“Oh, sweetheart, we’re still watching your movies,” Cat said. “You’ll be back—”  
           

“By Christmas Eve, yeah, but that’s like… that’s a l-l-long t-time away.”

“You’ll be with your dad, too.”

“’s not the same as last Christmas,” Carter mumbled again. “Is this the new arrangement now? With… did you swap your holiday with dad ‘cause of the divorce?”

“No… no, you’re always going to be here for Christmas, I promise,” Cat said, only to be interrupted by a high-pitched beep.

“Jacob?”

“Yeah,” Carter said.

“Honey, we’re always going to have our holidays together. Your dad and I want what’s best for you, to keep you happy, to keep you safe—”

The rest of what she said was cut off by the slam of the door and the droning _whir_ of rollie wheels on Carter’s luggage. Cat lived on the top floor of an apartment complex in midtown, with a doorman and a handful of security guards posted up near the elevators, stairwells, and down the hall from her front door. They were good, and likely instructed to stay out of eye and ear-shot of Carter… I was only alerted to their presence due to my previous training (plus, I was terribly on edge from my morning with Maxwell, my rescue at the hands and threats of Cat and M’gann, and the reeling implications I would face as the winner of Roulette’s bloody bouts).

“There was another attack, wasn’t there?” I asked.

“Yes,” M’gann confirmed. “How did you—”

“Is that why she’s sending her son away?”

“Yes.” M’gann crossed toward the corner cabinet and withdrew filters and pre-ground coffee. Given what I knew of Cat Grant’s extravagance, I would have expected a bit more from her than a standard grocery store coffee brand and a Mr. Coffee brewer. I suppose the mighty can fall when there are multiple attempts on their lives.

“When?”

“After your bout, in the warehouse. It's why it took us a while to start looking for you, but Cat had a hunch,” M’gann supplied. “Most everyone made it out perfectly fine, but there were guards, and I was separated from Cat… the rush of the people, the fears, the emotions…” M’gann paused her story and scooped another quarter cup of grounds into the filter basket. She shut the contraption and removed the carafe, poured enough water to fill the glassware to the brim and then transferred the liquid into the well of the machine. Such a simple process, but somehow made comforting by M’gann, mid-morning, with her soothing voice and calm nature.

Once finished, she placed the container onto the hot plate and pressed the “brew” button, turning to prop herself against the counter top to finish her story.

“We will never know for sure, but Cat woke with a nasty welt to the back of her head and smoke all around her. The doors were barred, but everyone else had cleared out.”

“Smoke? From the warehouse fire?”

M’gann nodded, and I felt the weight of an almost-motherless boy turn my limbs from sand to stone.

“From me?”

“That was not your fault, Astra. It was merely… Roulette is an opportunist, and Cat had already walked away with a lot of money that night—”

“She has to stop this,” I said, curling my fingers into fists atop the slate grey of her kitchen counter. It was polished and smooth, well-maintained, nothing like Alex’s pocked and dirtied table-top or my dated laminate. Cat had so much to lose, more than marble tile and designer cabinets and a company or a brand, but… Carter… her son…

What in Rao’s name did Kara think the moment she woke from her hyper-sleep in transport, knowing that Alura died? That… that I might’ve died, too?

Kara had likely thought me a criminal for her last year on Krypton, but did she think me dead? Alex would know, if only… well, if only we were on speaking terms.

“Astra?”

“Yes, I’m sorry,” I said, dipping my chin to confirm that _yes_ , I very much wanted another mug of coffee. It hadn’t seemed to have an effect, even without my powers, which, speaking of…

“I don’t have my powers,” I told her, taking hold of the warm ceramic and drawing it close. “I can’t… I can’t do anything. Fly, or—my heat vision, the ice breath—Rao, how am I going to refreeze the fraps without the—”

“You have much greater adversaries to face than those few disgruntled patrons who dislike sloshy frappucinos, Astra,” M’gann teased me.

“I know that but… somehow… I’m not afraid. I feel like myself once again.”

“You may not be afraid, but you are vulnerable now. What Maxwell Lord did to you might only be the beginning.”

“Were you in the room when he… when he did whatever it was he did?”

“I was able to infiltrate his offices as Simmons yesterday afternoon after Cat was cleared. She suggested I take those photos on the phone,” M’gann explained. “That night, after Cat nearly—we had to take her to the hospital, to ensure she did not sustain a concussion. The smoke inhalation was not nearly as bad as it could’ve been, but had I not been there… forgive me, Astra,” M’gann said, leaning across the counter to grip my curled fingers. “I could not retrieve you and find Cat. They had taken you with the anti-alien weaponry and the building was burning like—burning like—”

“I understand why you had to get out of there,” I said. “And I understand something I don’t think you do.”

“What’s that?”

“You went back for Cat,” I said. “Whatever fear you might’ve been grappling with in that fire, M’gann, knowing of your trauma… you went back in and you _saved_ her.” I squeezed her hand and tried for a reassuring smile, feeling the load that was my skeleton lighten infinitesimally. “You were so brave.”

“I couldn’t get to you though,” M’gann protested. “Not before—”

“You got me eventually.”

“But your _powers_ , Astra.”

“I am not worried about my powers,” I said firmly, taking a sip of coffee, and then snorting half of the cup up my nostrils when Cat banged her front door back closed.

“Well, Emerald Fire, you really should be,” Cat snipped, bypassing the coffee pot and heading straight for the liquor cabinet. “Who wants bourbon?” she growled, extracting a square bottle with a patterned crystal stopper. M’gann had already placed an extra mug near the coffee pot so Cat took it, filled it about half-way, and then added a generous amount of bourbon that even Alex Danvers would have blinked at.

“Long goodbye?” M’gann asked.

“The longest,” Cat admitted, inhaling deeply over her spiked beverage. “He doesn’t understand why he has to leave at Christmas.”

“Cat,” I began, setting my mug aside, “I’m so sorry—”

“No time for you to be sorry, or for me to wallow,” Cat nodded. “I’m doing what’s best for him, and keeping as many beings safe as I can in the process.”

“What about you? M’gann told me about Friday—”

“The doctors confirm that my lungs are perfectly capable of issuing the shrillest of complaints against incompetent nurses and candy-stripers, and the MRI suggests I’ve not lost total brain function,” she said. “But the issue, my dear, is more with _you_ than with me.”

“Why me? Because of Mr. Lord?”

“ _Mister_ Lord,” Cat scoffed. “Unfortunately, yes. We’ve got bigger issues than Roulette trying to kill me, it seems, if Maxwell Lord is involved. There was that unfortunate military presence skittering off from the scene when everyone poured out of the doors after your unexpected… eruption.”

“Wait, military presence?” I asked.

“So it would seem,” M’gann nodded.

“Two Humvees and men in fatigues—god, that sounds like the opening of a ridiculous war novel. M’gann saw them leaving the scene of the crime, isn’t that right?”

“Correct,” M’gann chimed in. “Those vats you discovered upon your first inspection, Astra? They were transporting them, speaking with Roulette’s guards about the anti-alien weaponry.”

“So… it’s no longer merely the Sinclairs that we’re fighting, is that it?”

“It is not,” Cat confirmed. “With Max involved, seems like private contracting gone… I don’t know, experimentally awry, probably. The tech must not be fully developed for the market to make bids on a government contract, so it looks like there’s something of a free-for-all between the Sinclairs, Lord Technologies, and the U.S. Government. They’re all in cahoots and Roulette’s got the aliens essentially contracted into experimental servitude.”

“And once the aliens are no longer useful to her? Or… them, I guess?” I questioned. “M’gann indicated that they disappeared. Who has rights? M’gann? The military? Maxwell?”

“That’s the next question we need answering,” Cat mumbled over the lip of her mug. “That, and when are you getting your powers back?”

“My powers? I… I have no idea.”

“Well, you better find someone who does have an idea, because you’re scheduled for the opening bout in January.”

My eyes went wide. “… I burned down their venue.”

“With such flare!” Cat flicked her wrist to indicate—well, _flare_ , perhaps, which seemed like both clever wordplay and irreverence to the highest degree. “Rich people do risky things with their money, Astra, the least of which is betting on alien cage matches.”

“Like inadvertently funding experimental torture,” M’gann muttered.

“Exactly like that,” Cat said. “Despite Roulette trying to have me dead, I’m still on the invite list.”

“If you keep showing up, you give her more chances to kill you,” I argued.

“Most know I hate a feline pun, but perhaps this is me using up several of my nine lives,” Cat quipped.

I was undoubtedly confused, and possibly a bit disoriented, for I could not recall having heard that English idiom before. “Humans have nine—”

“No, Astra,” M’gann said, shaking her head and smiling in her small, fragile way. “Just… no.”

I sighed, thinking for all the universe, it would be nice to merely return to my coffee shop and serve someone something simple—simply syrup, even. My life over the previous two weeks had been anything but, and, if Cat’s indication that I’d been singled out as something of a prize fighter meant anything significant, then I was in for one terrible spring semester. Which reminded me—

“ _Blekhtl_ ,” I swore, bringing a hand up to my face to rub my weary eyes. I’d been fighting and experimented on and harassed under the guise of a sexual proposition and then rescued, thank Rao, but during all that time—I’d also been under deadline.

“What is the matter, Astra?” M’gann asked.

“My final report is due on Wednesday,” I groaned, bringing my coffee mug up against my chest as if it could truly give me the fuel I needed to get through producing my report for Dr. Johanson. I think perhaps the greatest thing I feared, being powerless and running merely on depression and coffee alone, was graduate school.

“Your final—what?” Cat asked.

“Astra is pursuing her Ph.D. in ecology,” M’gann explained.

“Are you serious?” Cat asked. “You realize you can fly, right?”

“Not right now,” I muttered, thinking of how I’d typed so quickly the computer could not keep up with my keystrokes, that blinking black cursor malicious in its error.

“So this puts investigating your powers on the backburner, does it?”

“If I don’t complete this paper, I will fail out of the program,” I told Cat. “Your planet is on the verge of ecological collapse, and no one will listen to me lest I obtain a measure of credibility with a degree.”

“They won’t always listen to you even if you have a degree, especially if you plan on telling them the world’s too hot,” Cat answered. “And, to be frank, if you don’t find out whether or not you’re powerless for good, you’ll be dead. I think death trumps failing out of school I’m sure you don’t need, anyway. If you’re really from another planet, your knowledge is probably eons ahead of ours.”

“Perhaps not eons, but the means your scientists must go through in order to collect air samples could be seriously refined.”

“An article for our research magazine, then,” Cat said, giving a satisfied little shimmy. “Aren’t you two just brimming with interesting tidbits.”

“Perhaps you could reach out to Alex,” M’gann suggested quietly. She looked hesitant to even speak her name, which was for the better, for hearing it outside the muted chaos of my mind hurt me more than wallowing in self-pity. “If you could explain… explain the situation, perhaps she would let you see if something like this has happened before to Kar—”

“That’s not an option,” I snapped. “I would sooner go groveling to Kal-El than contact Alex when she’s strictly barred me from doing so.”

“I don’t care who you talk to,” Cat Grant said, taking a large pull from her mug and then swallowing before continuing: “but you better have an explanation for going powerless by Christmas, or my marketing department won’t be the only thing burning to cinders next quarter.”

“Very well,” I nodded, wondering whether or not Kal-El, in all his distasteful, _human_ pride, might stoop to lend me, a fellow Kryptonian, any aid whatsoever.

“Astra, I think it’s time I took you home,” M’gann said. “Cat, will you be okay here?”

“The security detail hasn’t reported anything in the building, I’ll be fine,” she said, motioning toward her back balcony window in case we wanted to fly. Cat walked with us, her mug still in hand, chewing thoughtfully on her lower lip. “Though… might I make a small request?”

“Of course,” M’gann said, opening the sliding glass as I eased outside and let the sun, warm and thrilling, hit my skin and boost my mood. “We are all three a team in this, Cat.”

“Could you check on Carter for me? An escort was supposed to follow him to Jacob Forster’s house. The address is 1128 Woodlawn Park, in the Glen Oaks subdivision northwest of Park Avenue. He’s going to check in, but sometimes he forgets to text…”

“I’d be happy to, Cat,” M’gann said, extending her forearm. Cat took her hand and squeezed briefly, her fingers tightening round the ceramic handle of her mug so hard her knuckles nearly matched the pale shade of the glaze.

“Astra, are you ready?” M’gann asked, opening her arms to me.

“Yes,” I admitted, wondering if this year would ever end. Everything since Thanksgiving had been, to put it in human terms, _absolute hell_. “I’m tired M’gann. Take me home.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“I expect your data collections to be a bit more legible this time around, Miss Green,” Dr. Johanson said. “A spreadsheet is not that difficult a concept to grasp.”

“It is when your computing methods are bizarrely inefficient,” I grumbled under my breath, handing over a bound notebook of my latest paper on atmospheric degradation and nitric oxide levels in the northeast corner of National City’s industrial sector. I tried to make it as simple as I could, but I still wondered if he’d held a grudge against me for last semester’s professor reviews, which, though anonymous, undoubtedly came from me—I was by no means favorable in my consideration of his teaching abilities.

“What was that?”

“Nothing, just, have a nice break, Dr. Johanson,” I said, backing out of his office.

I rounded the corner that constituted the ecology wing and got back to the middle section of the biology building with its massive lecture halls and laboratories. Up on this top floor with all of the offices, this late in the semester, I felt the loss of my powers even more heavily than before. Twilight fell over the deserted campus, and the beginnings of stars twinkled in the gloaming. I felt the tag-team pressure of Roulette, Max Lord, and the entire United States Military land on my shoulders like a burden no single person should ever have to shoulder.

Luckily, I had M’gann and Cat to see me through. Their dedication to this fight bolstered me in my weariness, but in these halls, I thought of another battle: a slowly dying world; a stubborn, senseless regime; a careless population made aware of its problems. I found myself thinking that at least in the end, the majority of Kryptonians never realized they were doomed. For all of our advances, the Extraction Guilds near the mines never released, or, at least to my knowledge, performed any tests that would have indicated that the core of Krypton was degrading. How we believed our planet was inexhaustible in all it blessedly provided us, I will never figure.

Looking out over the campus green, I watched two students strolling hand in hand, their back-packs weighted down with texts and papers, or perhaps drugs and sequins—I had seen it all in Jeremiah’s bag, and I didn’t typically ask questions. The glow of the lampposts was serene and static, the echo of stillness spreading across the grounds like a slow-moving fog.

Winter break. Christmas holiday. Green and red streamers were wrapped round one of the statues of an old academic forever immortalized in stone on the Quadrangle, but they did not flutter. There didn't seem to be a breeze, despite the cool play of temperatures. I imagined it was as peaceful as it would be for many months to come, now that I had taken up my mantle as a general again, with a mission to fulfill.

Nights like this on Krypton were always special to me. In my adolescence, Alura and I would sneak a jug of Arcadian wine onto our balcony and indulge, naming off the planets we would one day see and the dreams we would one day fulfill. She was always so very tactile with me, similar to human interactions; I did not realize until my arrival here (context, of course, for what I’d grown accustomed to in my upbringing), that Kryptonians did not touch each other very much. Hugs upon return from deployment, or after long absences perhaps, but we would simply bow upon greeting, a dip of the head, instead of the intimacy of a handshake. But Alura did not treat me like that. She would run her fingers through my hair and braid the strands together into something unnecessarily elaborate as we sat and drank and shared our deepest secrets. Her hands constantly found my shoulder, or my knee, or some small part of me, and they would rest there. I thought nothing of it, but now, I wonder if it had something to do with our connection from the womb, bound together as we were and developing in the Codex, two tiny bodies smushed and aligned, linked by more than genetics.

I always held Alura the nights before my deployment. I would curl around her and reassure her of my return as we both fought back tears for the sake of the other. And on the nights that Kara was old enough to toddle into the sleeping chamber to seek us out I held her all the tighter, so she would remember who I was fighting for.

The loss of my sister is one of the heaviest losses that I carry. For all the animosity and resignation toward the end, I never loved Alura any less than fiercely. She was kind and wise and generous with her praise, touch, her love—for me, the designated remainder. She was equally as generous to and for Kara, for every hope we had ever harbored for her. I wonder sometimes, if she would be happy that Kara is happy, or, if not happy, at least living. Or if she regrets sending her away…I wished so desperately to go to her.

I knew what it felt like to lose everything I once loved. I knew that dealing with that loss produced a grief so powerful it is all-consuming; I knew that if I did not have those fights to look forward to, in a sense, that the rage might overwhelm me.

_Please, Rao,_ I prayed. _Do not let Kara become anything like me, for bitterness is catching and I am diseased._

I pressed the call button for the elevator and moved to the side, staring out the window once more and imagining my sister at my right, my niece on my left. What if we all three had left together? What type of family might we have become? Would it have been on Earth? Or would we have managed to escape to any number of planets I had previously visited? Could I have exploited connections and ties I made in the military, or would we have had to avoid those I had angered or fought against on previous campaigns?

_You have been the sun of our lives. Our prayers will be the sun that lights your journey home. We will remember you every dawn and await the night to join you in the sky._

_Rao's will be done._

I often wondered exactly what Rao’s will had to do with me. Where, in all of this happenstance, was destiny's hand?

The elevator dinged and I stepped inside the car, and, of course, I cursed His will to the Light and back for all that occurred afterward.

“Hold the elevator!”

I pressed the _door open_ button until the woman with cropped brown hair and a stack of papers and file folders as big as an unabridged Kryptonian history shuffled into the car. I didn’t recognize her immediately, not with her new hairstyle, but I smelled her, I saw her jacket, and—no, she wouldn’t, would she?—she was still wearing the grey hat I gave her months ago.

“Alex,” I said, backing away, fearful that without my powers to sustain me, my knees would give out.

“I—oh,” she muttered, taking a step to the side, casting her gaze toward her feet. “Uh, hey, I guess.”

I couldn’t stop staring at her; the clipped edges of her hair, new and striking and so terribly suited to her ever-growing seriousness; the slight bulge of her arms, weighted down with files; the way her jacket rode up against her cumbersome load and took the back of her shirt with it. I’d touched that skin only two weeks previously, and having known what it felt like, found myself desperate to be near her again.

“…you can let off the button now, Astra.”

“Oh, I… yes,” I said, releasing my finger and hitting the button for the bottom floor.

“Can you, uhm, hit the basement level for me?”

“Of course,” I said, trying to focus on the panel of numbers in front of me, and not the woman who broke me at my side. “That’s… a lot of research.”

“Yeah,” she said noncommittally.

“Yours?”

“Uh huh.

“What about?”

“Astra,” she sighed, and the papers in her arms seemed to sag with her. “I wish you wouldn’t—”

“I just… I can’t stand here in silence with you,” I confessed, developing a pure hate for the _longest elevator ride in the universe_.

“You won’t have to for long, we’re almost—shit!”

It didn’t take much for most of the files to go toppling as the elevator slowed to its first stop. Papers fluttered everywhere and Alex dove down to catch them. I followed out of courtesy, out of magnetism and desperation, and before we both knew it, the doors were sliding shut again and taking us down to the basement.

Alex groaned and let her head fall forward onto the stack of research. The crinkle at her forehead was prominent and lumpy, even beneath the brim of my hat.

She mumbled something incomprehensible.

“What?”

She repeated it, but her face was still glued to the paper stack in some relief of depressing defeat.

“You must speak up Alexandra, I cannot hear you.”

“I said ‘the universe doesn’t want to take it easy on us’, does it?”

I took half of the papers from the top of her stack and rose to my feet, stepping out and trying not to look back as she struggled with the remaining files.

“It most certainly does not,” I answered. “Now, are you looking for the file boxes? There are several in the storage closet on the west end of this hallway. If you do not object, I’ll show you where and then I’ll leave you alone.”

She cocked her head at me and held her half of the papers closer to her chest, drew it in, as if hugging herself might give her the strength to tell me no.

“Okay,” she said weakly, and fell into step behind me as I walked down the hall.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“I withdrew, officially,” Alex finally admitted as we took the elevator back up to the first floor. It had been an uncomfortable five minutes of pointing and stacking, rearranging into some mysterious order that only Alex could decipher, and then, several strips of packing tape later, Alex was ready to take the last six years of her life with her off of the UCNC campus and out into the great unknown of National City.

“So… your research?” I asked politely.

“I need it, I… I got a job.”

“Oh,” I said, stepping off of the elevator for the first floor. “Congratulations, then. I know all of my workers are constantly wondering whether they’ll acquire a job in their respective fields upon graduation, or—” Alex looked at me like she couldn’t stomach my commentary, so I tried to circle back to her dismissal. “I don’t suppose we’ll have any more chances for run-ins in the science building, now.”

“No,” Alex shook her head. “I don’t suppose we will.”

She shifted the box in her grip and hitched it up with her knee to rest more securely against her hip. I kept myself from reaching out to aid her, but my reticence must have shown, for Alex looked back to me with the most aggrieved expression. “I think it will be for the best.”

“Before… before you leave for good,” I started, wondering if Alex would take pity on me. “Would you, I—I mean… how is she?”

Her eyes darted up and to the side, and they shone beautifully in the light of the foyer. The building seemed just as deserted as the rest of the campus, and I feared our voices would echo down the chambered hallways.

“She’s… she’s fine, Astra. Relieved now that finals are over, and looking forward to break.”

“Well, aren’t we all?” I asked, refusing to let myself beg for any more scraps of what she felt guilted to give me. She noted how I cut her off, and arched a brow. “I’m sorry, I…it has been a very trying few weeks, you understand.”

“I would imagine so,” Alex answered, shifting the box in her hand once again. “And something… something is bothering me.”

I stood with my hands crossed over my chest, waiting expectantly.

“You couldn’t hear me earlier in the elevator.”

“What?”

“When I was in the elevator, mumbling about how the universe sucks,” Alex clarified. “You couldn’t hear me.”

“That’s what’s bothering you?”

“Why did you ask me to repeat myself? You know, with the… uh… with the hearing and all?” Alex said, waving a hand toward the side of my face before returning it to the corner of the heavy box. For one blissful instant I thought she might touch me, but that prospect faded quickly as she wrestled with her materials once again.

“Oh, _oh_ ,” I said, finally understanding she was referring to the super-sensitive hearing that I’d possessed upon coming to this planet. I’d grown so accustomed to filtering most sounds that I’d forgotten I no longer possessed the power; I felt Kryptonian again. Or, perhaps as Kryptonian as anyone might when not actually living on the planet.

“There was an… an incident and I—my powers, uhm…”

“Astra,” Alex gave me a critical once-over and noted the bandage over my hand from where one of Maxwell’s IVs had been thrust beneath my skin. “Oh my God, are you _hurt_?”

“…would it matter to you if I was?”

Alex dropped her box of files and reached for me. I was so swept up in her sadness I had no forewarning to staunch my own. “How can you _say_ that, of course it matters!”

I felt tears welling before I could stop them. Alex’s fingers were wrapped round my arms and I felt them, I truly _felt_ her strong grip, the way her blunt nails carved little sickle patterns into the underside of the muscle there. She was holding me, not gently, but I would not argue with fortune. She was holding me and imploring me with an expression that suggested she cared so deeply it might truly be affecting her as much as me and I had no response.

How could I begin to explain my mission? How could I tell her of Cat’s and M’gann’s involvement in all of this? I would have to begin with the bouts, and gradually bring in the Sinclair Trust, Roulette and the shooting, and then Max, the kidnapping and the power drain—and then behind it all, the very military who’d been keeping her safe? How could I tell her she was the one responsible for my anger, that I felt her betrayal so profoundly that she was the reason I dismantled the forcefield and the warehouse along with it?

How could I tell her she was the cause of my rage and my depression?

How could I leave her with that when I still loved her so?

“Astra… I…” her grip grew tighter on my arms and later she told me she did that to stop herself from touching me, from embracing me, from reaching to wipe tears from my cheek and kissing my sorrows away. She told me how that moment in the hallway was harder because the realization of who I was to her and to Kara was not nearly as fresh, not nearly as raw as it had been when she’d lost herself to drink the morning after her dismal Thanksgiving. She’s wanted me as long as I wanted her, and those hints shone through that final night before the separation; when I became the stronger of the two and fully processed what Alex had done with her ultimatum.

By protecting Kara at all costs, she was sacrificing her own happiness, and she would continue to do so for months and years on end; that is, until Supergirl, and until things miraculously began coming back together.

But for that evening we stood in the foyer of the science building as a wretched pair of former lovers. I felt as if the world were shining a too-bright bulb upon us and studying our pain, wondering which ligament would be best to snip apart next; which muscle could sustain another incision after all the torment we’d already endured. The cosmos had already seen fit to lacerate our hearts with its unforgiving scalpel, but I think this time it came for my reason, my mind… for I found myself agreeing with Alex by night’s end, sacrificing my own happiness for Kara as she had.

Her grip on my arms eventually softened, and her thumbs stroked the skin beneath my sleeves. I did not want to do this here, whatever _this_ became, and so I gently removed her hands from my body and stooped to retrieve her box of files, wincing as I stood back up.

“Astra, no—”

“Walk with me, please? I… I will talk with you as we go to your bike.”

Alex nodded and tromped forward. I followed, and she held the door open for me, then rushed to my side as she pointed toward the student parking lot where her bike sat lonely and stalwart at the glowing edge of a beaming street lamp.

“Do your injuries have anything to do with the shooting?” she asked eventually.

“They are related, yes,” I answered. “But not _from_ the shooting. Truly, it is no cause for concern.”

“Bullshit,” Alex said, shoving her hands deep into her jacket pockets. “What in this universe could ever hurt you? What if it came for Superman, huh? Or Kara?”

I thought of M’gann’s reconnaissance, or… perhaps we might call it surreptitious mind-reading. Kal-El had once again been significantly less-than-forthcoming in response to my telephoned inquiries concerning my powersurge, so M’gann took her scheduled jaunt to Metropolis and did some White Martian mind-delving. The findings were hopeful, for if my condition was similar to what Kal-El had experienced in the past, I took heart in knowing my abilities would return to me within a few days' time.

“Little do you know, Alexandra,” I replied, “that Kal-El has sustained similar injuries before. He has kept such information to himself, so as not to incite public hysteria.”

“Wait, you mean… you mean Superman’s been _hurt_ before?”

“Yes, in a similar way to myself, and with a similar substance. Kal-El is… not very helpful, though. Much of the information we acquired from him he did not realize he was giving.”

“So you… forced him?”

“…not exactly.”

“God, what are you even talking about? How does… how does this have any bearing on whether you’re hurt or not?” Alex asked me, coming to a halt beside her bike. She leaned against the lamppost and looked up at me from heavy-lidded eyes, her face shadowed and half-obscured from the glow overhead.

“The shooting, and—well, you know I am involved in some…” I thought of the least dangerous way to phrase ‘cage-death matches’. “…some alien enterprises that you do not wish to drag Kara into?”

Alex nodded distastefully.

“They know I am Kryptonian. And there is a substance, _Kryptonite_ , Kal-El calls it, that can be used to harm us. I was fighting and… and I exerted too much energy. My powers were drained and I was… uhm, taken and—”

“Taken?! Like, like kidnapped, or—who took you? What did they—oh god, that’s from an IV isn’t it? They… they _tested_ you, just like some experi—wait, do they have Superman, too?! Is that why he told you about the… the powers thing?”

“No, they know nothing of my connection to him beyond that we hail from the same planet,” I reassured her, placing the box on the back mount of her bike. I pulled the straps and cinches round the box to keep it secure for her ride, unable to maintain eye contact. I wouldn’t drag her into this in the same way that she wouldn’t drag Kara, which warranted expressing to her. “They know nothing of Kara, either, Alex, I swear. If I have it my way, they will never know that she exists.”

“Good, that’s… that’s good,” Alex responded, toeing at the concrete with her boot.

Why she did not immediately get on her bike and leave should have been obvious in the moment, but I couldn’t reconcile the thought that the woman who wrenched herself away from me might still want me, might still want an _us_ despite taking what she deemed as the higher road in order to keep Kara safe. For Alex to see me powerless was likely not something she had ever anticipated, and yet again, I ended up influencing her path, inspiring her research over the next several months. She may have been the foremost expert on Kryptonian biology on the planet at barely 26 years old, but she would not have been introduced to Kryptonite or solar flares at the DEO until year three under J’onn’s command, had I not said something that evening.

Funny, yet again, how the universe works.

“So you’re… completely powerless?”

“I am,” I answered seriously. “My powers will return within a few days.”

“So… just like a human?”

“Just like a _Kryptonian_ ,” I corrected. “But… yes. I must rest to recover, and stay in the sun if possible.”

“You should go to the beach,” Alex suggested. “It’s a little cool out, but clear skies from now until Friday. It would be peaceful, I guess.”

“Are we really so uncomfortable with each other that we must discuss the weather, Alexandra?”

She grinned inadvertently at that, as did I.

“I am glad that you’ve found a new job in which your research will be an aid to you,” I continued, pretending that my heart wasn’t breaking the longer I stayed in that parking lot. For it did hurt, but it felt marvelous as well. After all of the fighting and uncertainty of the bouts over the weekend, Alex reminded me that I had once been something of a normal woman with a personal life, working at a small business and stealing kisses whenever the moment allowed. “Is that the reason for,” I motioned toward the blunt strands of hair at her chin, and she rolled her eyes playfully. “Your new style?”

“Yeah, I… it was sort of an impulse decision. New job, new… me, maybe,” she shrugged and shook her head gently, the shorter strands whipping back and forth near her jaw line. “I don’t know about it, though…”

“…may I see?”

“What?”

“Your hair? Underneath your hat?”

“ _Your_ hat,” she corrected.

“No,” I shook my head. “I gave it to you because I wanted you to have it.”

“That’s… I know that,” she mumbled, reaching up to run her fingers along the stretchy brim. “It’s my favorite.”

Alex dragged the grey beanie off her head and ran her fingers through the new bob. She had always been gorgeous, but this new haircut suited her in ways I could not articulate; with its cropped edges, it drew attention to her strong jaw and lithe neck, suggesting professionalism, efficiency, endurance. She looked older, perhaps, but I wondered if such a thought had more to do with the haircut and not the burden of knowledge that she carried pertaining to close members of her immediate family. Regardless of the reasoning behind the change, it suited her terribly well.

“Alex,” I murmured.

“It’s kinda weird, you know, whispy as it is—my pony tail is like, _this_ short now,” she said, holding up two fingers at barely an inch apart. She remained endearing in her uncertainty, but I did not like that she thought of herself as anything other than exceptional.

I tried not to, but ever since the Saturnian violation of my mind, I had not been able to control my impulses, especially not when the source of my tornadic emotions was standing inches before me. I raised my left hand and curled those short strands behind her ear, just to feel her again. Her jaw quivered, as if her teeth were chattering beneath my touch, though I wonder what she had to fear considering my powerlessness. She told me later she feared herself, and how she almost compromised all she’d worked for to take me back that night.

“It suits you so wonderfully, Alexandra,” I attempted to assuage her fears. “Though you know, you have never been anything other than utterly ravishing to me.”

Alex has since let me know that I am something of a “sweet-talker.” I could not help if she succumbed to my words, for I spoke nothing but the truth. She gave in to me, to her desires, and to that volatile thing between us that could never stabilize until we both exorcised our respective demons. She took me in her arms and kissed me as I imagined two people might kiss when one returned home from a mission, like there might be a chance that she’d never get to taste me again, and so she was compensating by doing an exceedingly thorough job in the moment. One hand found my arm again and dug in, latched on as she had earlier, and the other gravitated toward the back of my neck, fingers weaving through my curls, gentle pressure applied to my skull where I’d sustained any number of blows the previous weekend.

And when I pulled her against me, I felt her soft heat, her weight. I felt her cleave to me and I responded in kind, for I had not felt the security that she engendered with her kiss in the two weeks since our falling out.

All I remembered from that awful morning at her apartment was harried and frazzled emotion: sorrow, anger, betrayal, all very fast and very shallow, like a riptide tearing me from her. Yet there, in the parking lot next to the biology building, I did not feel comfort or hope by any means, but competing understanding and confusion. After I had spoken with Cat, I’d seen what she’d sacrificed by sending Carter away at this special time of family and togetherness, all for the sake of his safety. I had a better frame of reference for what Alex was doing, wedging herself between me and Kara. She wanted me, but would send me away if it meant protection, safety, and fewer anxieties on Kara’s part. And yet here she was holding me, kissing me, moaning into my mouth as her tongue dove deep and I sighed my surrender against her lips.

And yet, it was wrong. She had indicated as much, had carefully leveraged her relationship with Kara against me, for I was a criminal, I was a target, I was caught up in a mission that left me powerless and prodded and abandoning my business for days on end. But Alex was kissing me like her threats had never happened, and I almost gave into them.

Almost.

“Alex,” I mumbled, twisting my head, loving the way her lips grazed my jaw, my throat, the soft underside of my chin. “Alex, do not… you’re… Alex, this isn’t fair!” my voice rose in desperation as I shoved her back lightly, forcing her to stagger back into the glow of the streetlamp. Her pupils were blown and hazy, her arms held out at her sides in something of a defensive stance, as if I might strike her. “W-What,” I took several deep breaths through my nose, then placed my hands over my face, exhaling into the cupped shaped of my palms to calm myself. “What can you possibly _want_ from me?”

“I… I’m sorry,” she began, cautiously taking a step back toward me. “Th-th-this doesn’t,” she took a huge gulp of air and reached out tentatively, and I could do little but allow the embrace. Her arms snaked around my back and I felt her chest press against mine, felt her ribcage expand and shrink and expand again as she fought for air and words: “This can’t ch-change anything.”

“I think—I think I…” I took another large breath through my nose, and tried to drown out the sound of my pulse thundering in my ears. “I know that,” I whispered back, becoming accustomed to the breathless sensation Alex always produced.

“It was never because… because I didn’t care for you,” she murmured against me, digging her nails once more into my skin. It was hot, and deliriously demanding, how she latched onto my body, unwilling to release me. “Astra, I—I’m sorry. I never gave you the chance to explain, but even if I did, I still can’t… I _can’t_ —”

“Shhh, Alex, I know. I know.”

She brushed her fingers through my hair and ran her thumbs along my cheeks; I’d never felt more vulnerable, or warm, or precious, or perfect, or safe, or everything I’d ever wanted to feel, with her holding me like I meant something.

“This has to be goodbye,” she said.

“I understand.”

“Do you? Because I don’t, not really, not when I want… when I…” Finger nails in the flesh of my biceps, her voice hitching and raw, not because she was aroused by me, but because she was _sad_. “After what I did to you, those things I said—you’re being so damn _forgiving_ and I don’t deserve it, or you, not any of it—”

“What you did wasn’t right, but I understand why,” I whispered, brushing a wayward lock of hair back behind her ear. “The methods were most certainly questionable; however, you were not fighting with much power on your side. I understand, and I might even hate you for it, that ultimatum, but in the end… I do not believe destiny is done with us yet.”

“What in the hell does _destiny_ have to do with this?” she blustered, laying her chin upon my shoulder and pulling me flush by the waist, closer, harder, as if she would never dare release me.

“Of all the humans…”

“Of all the _aliens_ …” she echoed.

“I cannot tell you that I’m no longer in danger,” I whispered. “I can defend my actions on Krypton, but at present, I am caught up in something I would never dare drag Kara into. So I understand, Alex, but I do wish you could give me something, anything of her—”

“I’m afraid,” Alex confessed. “Of opening that door,” she murmured. “Every decision I’ve ever made has been to protect her, including… including doing what I did to you. If _I_ see you, though, it… it’s different—”

“Alexandra,” I said, pulling her head back and tilting her shining eyes up to meet my own. She looked so young beneath that half-light, hope edging on optimism that I would note had decreased in the months that would eventually come to pass between us. “I believe one of your English phrases is most applicable, here. That fairness, I spoke of earlier? You cannot have your cake and eat it, too. You cannot have me, and withhold me from Kara.”

“Your turn to make an ultimatum, then,” she replied.

“If that is how you see it, then yes. I would do much for love of a partner, but even more so, for my family. And Kara is why I tried to make a life on this planet, Alex. I have had… such wonderful moments with you in our few months of knowing each other. But understand, I’ve known Kara since Rao blessed her, since the Codex shaped her form, since she came toddling into my world. If you make me choose between you two, I will choose her, and… I think you’ve done the same, even if you do not realize it.”

Alex sobbed against my shoulder and I cried, too, though not as raggedly or as desperately as I had at the first betrayal. To know it hurt her to do this, to keep Kara from me, and for her to apologize… it both irritated and relieved me, such contradictory feelings inspired by the one human who would not leave my heart alone. Our feelings would compare nothing to what Kara would one day feel, when she realized we had consulted with each other and made decisions on her behalf, but had not _included_ her at all.

_El Mayarah_ , she would chastise us. Strong _together._

“I’m sorry, I am… I’m really sorry, I just… I don’t know what to do, I can’t—" Alex could not seem to compose herself. "I want to trust everything about you, I _want_ everything, all of you, I’m sorry, I—”

“Shh, Alex, don’t…” I said, rocking her back and forth, feeling her hot, wet breath against me, the leather of her jacket on my arms, cool again, the whisper of wind chilling my neck where her tears trickled down to my collarbone.

“A clean break,” Alex said, lifting her head, sniffling, eyes red as Streld sands. “A clean break so we can… so we can move on…”

“There’s no moving on for me when I know she’s out there, Alex,” I answered. “I will resolve the disputes before me, but I will not stop looking for Kara.”

Alex’s jaw twitched and the muscles jumped; if I had my powers, I would have been able to hear the grinding of her teeth, of her breath evening out; I would’ve been able to see her pupils shrinking back to stabilized sizes, as well as the curl of her fingers against the meat of her hand.

“Just… don’t use me to do it.”

“I won’t,” I said. “I swear by Rao.”

“I never asked you to swear.”

“You didn’t have to,” I said, reaching up, one final time, to cup her face. _“Khao-shuh_ , Alexandra.”

I didn’t wait to watch her mount her bike. If I didn’t turn from her then, I knew I never would. So I gathered what resolve remained and dropped my hand, pivoted on my heel, and began walking away into the coolness of the evening. I wrapped my hands round my chest and vowed I would defeat Roulette. I would discover just how involved Max and the military were in the bouts. I would release M’gann from her debt and protect Cat. And then, once it was all over, I would find Kara after all these years.

If I was extremely lucky, I might even get to see Alex one more time.

 

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> have you ever just been so dissatisfied with a chpater u just threw ur hands up and went guh. ok. gotta post, it's been too long.
> 
> that's what this chapter is. plot heavy. not as much description to break up a hella ton of dialogue, especially between mgann and cat and astra. but it's twice as long as my usual ones and i've got to get this plot moving so here is my humble unbeta'd offering. 
> 
> sry it took so long ive been so busy u guyzzzz ://///


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lois Lane is Lucy Liu and no one can tell me otherwise

 

As I had when I first opened the shop, I fell back into routine.

My powers returned like an unexpected Christmas present; suddenly, surprisingly, and to my cheerful delight. It happened Christmas Eve, in fact, when I saw a handful more lightweight jackets in varied shades of red and green, strolling up and down sidewalks, frequently entering the shop to purchase something sweetened with cinnamon. I was wiping down the countertop under Jeremiah’s watchful gaze and somehow, without my knowing it, began floating as I hummed. Thankfully I grounded myself before anyone else could notice my spontaneous levitation.

“Ashley, you good?” Jeremiah did ask, though that was a common refrain bandied about between the workers ever since Alex and I dissolved our ties.

'Broke-up' as the youth say.

“Of course, Jeremiah,” I told him, offering a small smile.

His eyebrows rose in that skeptical way, high and animated against his brown skin, never quite taking my statements for truths. For all of his supposed superficiality, I believed Jeremiah was the wisest of all his coworkers—his extroverted air and affinity for humor led one to believe he was perhaps not as intuitive as he truly was, which is why I never suspected that he knew—that any of them did—until they told me. Kara laughs now, for she is far worse at hiding than I am. (“I flew here… on a bus, Aunt Astra,” has now become a common chorus on game nights with Kara and her friends. It will occasionally lead to minor grappling matches between myself and my niece. I await the day she finally pins me without my going easy on her.)

The holidays flew by almost as quickly as I did. The next bout was not scheduled until early February—I had thrown a significant wrench into the structure of such bouts, what with burning their venue to the ground (not only did they need a space for fighting, but also, as it turns out, an intergalactic portal—more on that later). Roulette had taken great pains to secure a facility that was far off the radar from any authorities who had not been coerced into silence by the government, and, one that could function as arena, testing sight, and holding cell.

Cat had told me that it was also important to have a space for the caterers.

So that, too.

The holiday season soon overran the shop, and my workers oozed bubbliness without the pressures of school to dampen their spirits. Ciders were a big seller, as was the chai infused with ginger. Our food suppliers gave me a deal on tiny cookie men with icing etched into hair styles; the cookie-men wore chocolate buttons, and clothing outlined with miniscule sugar granules tinted with Blue No. 11 or Red Dye or Yellow—it smeared on children’s cheeks and made a mess of our tables, but I had to order a second shipment, they sold so fast. Connie had the annoying habit of sucking on the end of a candy cane until the sugar-stick became pointed and deadly, like some sort of crudely fashioned weapon. She would playfully jab at us until one day I snapped, took her by the shoulders, and asked her, as calmly as I could, not to do it anymore (it was not as if a stick of sugar could pierce my skin, even if I were powerless, but nevertheless, such action induced nervous anxiety the likes of which I did not wish to deal with while working).

Connie’s eyes shuttered downward, immediately remorseful, and I had to take her to the backroom to explain that during my stint in the military in, uhm, _Afghanistan_ , I was often engaged in close combat with sharp objects. I did not mean to snap at her, but the bouts had heightened senses which I’d suppressed for the longest time—being a soldier is terribly difficult to forget, and my training, whether it merely be rising early, or disarming an innocent girl with a pointed candy stick, could not ever be truly forgotten.

My workers seemed… not fearful _of_ me, but fearful _for_ me. Han was staying through break to help the most, as he would not be flying back to China. But Jeremiah, Connie, and Leah, all in turn, volunteered to give up their holiday breaks to assist during the busy holiday hours.

“For the last time, all of you, Megan will be here. It is really no bother to be without you for a week. It will be great practice for when you graduate.”

This was, apparently, not a great thing to say. Leah teared up, as did Connie, and Jeremiah crossed his arms over his apron and chewed determinedly against the inside of his jaw. As I saw later, in their joint Christmas card to me, Brigadier’s Brewers was apparently the best job they had ever had, and one of their favorite parts of the college experience. I was, in their words, the “HBIC, greatest boss, Ashley x Coffee 5ever!!!”

While most of their individual comments on the card were indecipherable, the sentiment was no less cherished.

Time passed.

The New Year came and went, and I somehow spent it in a short black dress, perched at Cat’s side atop the CatCo building. Men in suits and women in finery flitted about, adorned with cufflinks and diamond lavalieres and all sorts of excess apropos for such events.

(“I can’t get out of this party,” Cat had told me at the end of December while M’gann and I sipped coffee in her kitchen. Carter was in the next room over, engrossed in his microscope and slide set Cat had gifted him upon their private holiday together. “It’s a CatCo tradition. Investors, _potential_ investors, all my department heads and stakeholders—I’ve been keeping a low profile since the shooting, but I… I need to have this party.”

“Will you have a security detail?” I asked her. “Will… will Maxwell Lord be at this party?”

“Unfortunately. He’s one of the biggest advertising accounts our tech division features. But I’m not concerned with him; he knows you’re mine,” Cat responded with such easy possessiveness I did not feel insulted, but instead—safer? The strange camaraderie fostered amongst our intrepid trio was a boon during my heartache, and so I let the comment slide. Cat might occasionally see us as trophies to collect (Alex had at one time, too, marking which species she apprehended and ranking them on a scale of capture-and-containment difficulty), but it is a sentiment she eventually outgrew; we cannot be _dehumanized_ if we are not human, but there is no word in the language with a similar sense. Spending time with us helped Cat understand we were alien, yes, but feeling, and breathing, and sentimental, and at times even fragile. We were lives that could not be easily pinned into the world’s _Other_ category, and Cat, and Alex, and the various humans I’ve interacted with over time, have taken great care in learning that lesson.

“Security will be there, but I’m not worried about me,” Cat continued describing the party, looking off toward the living room.

Quiet fell in Cat’s vast penthouse that morning; drawn curtains revealed a sunny, cloudless sky; the occasional car puttered down the boulevards in what was usually abysmal National City traffic. It seemed the people of the city were caught in the soporific holiday lull between Christmas Day and New Year’s celebrations, returning to work only half-heartedly, looking forward to the one last raucous celebration before hunkering back down in their cubicles for the first rigorous quarter of a new fiscal year.

“Carter attends this… party?” I asked, blinking through Cat’s wall to find the boy, curled over his wide-ruled notebook paper with a pencil in one hand, his eye pressed determinedly against the ocular lens on the device.

“Only for the first hour,” Cat amended. “It’s the one business event I ever take him to. I wish I could say that I was better than that, using my son like some kind of investment tool… but two years ago, he said he wanted to come. And then he wanted to come back, and this year—”

“He’s requested to go again?” M’gann asked.

“His father got him a three-piece suit from Brooks Brothers,” Cat griped, “… _tailored_.”

“And that is… bad?” M’gann, again.

“He’s a child,” Cat said, running her thumb listlessly round the rim of her mug. “I don’t know why his father wants him to grow up so fast.”

Kara’s memory flashed before me: Kara at table, still learning her etiquette at Instruction—one firm, guiding word from Alura, Kara’s abashed response, cheeks pink, her shield of straight golden hair falling forward and closeting her off in the way Connie’s wavy jet hair had fallen and hidden her face when I took her in the backroom and bade her stop with the peppermint poking, when I firmly told her _no_ —why must we curb that playful impulsiveness? Why should Carter, with his eager inquisitiveness, be forced into restricting clothing designated by adults as fashionable, as mature, when he is not yet ten cycles grown? Benign teases and joy somehow always fall to the demons of experience, and Cat, rightfully so, feared for all the fiends that might touch her son—Carter, such a bright boy, who was still infatuated with child-like, universal wonder.

“I’ll stay with him,” I volunteered, for the shop would be closed New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. “M’gann… I know New Year’s festivities are not celebrated solely by humans, so you will have quite the night ahead of you at the bar." I turned back to Cat. "But I could stay with him, at CatCo I mean—and keep my head down.”

“Play baby-sitter to a child at a party?” Cat asked.

M’gann laughed at my grimace, and Cat seemed utterly flummoxed.

“What?”

“Astra hates that phrase.” M’gann rolled her eyes when I nudged her, a spark of mirth revealed at the edge of her grin. “ _Why ever would a human sit on a baby, M’gann_?”

Cat snorted in the most undignified manner I had ever seen, then brought four fingers up to her lips to quiet her chuckles.

“I had not been here long enough to decipher such strange phrasing. You were unhelpful and only exacerbated my misunderstanding,” I grumbled, at which Cat continued to laugh, and M’gann joined her.

“It is not humorous.”

“No, no it is,” Cat tittered, wiping at a tear shed in laughter. “For all your formal military training, Astra, you are comically misinformed.”

“Do you know how many idioms the universe has, Cat?” I responded hotly. “Seventeen languages in my head and not one of them suggests sitting on their young lest they intend to hatch them!”

“What movie are you guys talking about?” Carter asked, moving into the kitchen on silent, sock-footed feet.

“Foreign-language film, sweetheart,” Cat said. “It’s a comedy.”

“Oh, what’s it called?”

“Never mind that, what do you have there?”

“Sketches from the tidal pool samples,” Carter said, showing his mother. “I tried to Google that thing, but I don’t know what it is.”

“A bacteria, though you would need a centrifuge to separate it from the ocean water; if you treat it and it grows, you would be able to compose a far more detailed rendering,” I said, glancing over his shoulder at his sketch. “With just one cubic centimeter of water, you’d likely want your settings at 14,000 RPM for a minute. If you’re looking to grow bacteria cultures in your Petri dish, it would be wise to make such an investment.”

Carter’s jaw hung open curiously, his small knuckles clutching his sketches tightly. “Mom…?”

“Ashley studies in the ecology department at UCNC,” Cat said.

“Seriously?” Carter brightened, tentatively sneaking closer to me, his notebook held out like some sort of peace offering. His sketches were—well, a child's sketches, when I was so accustomed to Alura’s sure hand, but everyone needs practice. “Would you, uh, do you want to come look at my microscope?”

Cat’s brows shot up over her forehead as Carter addressed me, eyes wide open, the beginnings of a smile tucked away in dimples cushioned beneath a layer of baby fat.

“I would like that very much, thank you, Carter,” I said, and followed him into the living room.

Shortly after our morning with Cat, Carter was told that I would be escorting him to the party, just so he would have a ‘friend’ that wasn’t one of his mother’s ‘work-friends’. But before I left that day, Cat stopped me, pulled me aside, and told me that was the first time she’d ever heard her son ask for someone who wasn’t _her_ to join him in an activity. He’s not been socializing well, she told me (and she apparently told her therapist, too, and then told me about telling her therapist, which seemed beyond the point). So that moment, apparently, meant a lot for Cat and Carter both. I facilitated unknowingly, but felt immensely lighter as the day wore on, and I felt a swell of happiness for the first time since Alex had left.)

 

The evening of the party was uneventful as far as death-threats go, though there was much champagne and talk of greater fiscal feats in the upcoming year. I kept an ear out, but none at Cat’s party seemed affiliated with Roulette and her endeavors, save for Maxwell Lord. He approached me, but our exchange was short, especially under Carter’s attentive stare. Max is a leach, but he would make no move against me in public and with a child at my side. My powers had returned as well, so I might have let my eyes flare red in his direction more than once over the course of the evening.

He kept his distance.

On and on I worked through the winter, and then into the pastel promise of spring; more time passed, and I thought of Alex only sparingly. I fought a Lunarian in the first bout of the year at the new facility; a sporting arena, if you would believe it, owned and operated by one of the steady patrons of Roulette’s bouts. In the final fight of the evening, a metahuman named Laoise Smythe shattered the backboards of two hooping contraptions in which one ‘makes the basket’—the sport Blake played before I shattered the bones in his left hand. I didn’t like the setting for the bouts, not only because of the ear-splitting screams from Laoise, but also because the arena seemed a touch more difficult to navigate than the warehouse had been. However, this would not be the permanent home of the fights, but Cat discovered that Roulette was spinning her wheels in search of a venue.

Good.

Less fighting, but the pressure was coming down from the top.

Cat threw herself into the story, and M’gann and I found ourselves at Cat’s office or apartment on Sunday mornings more often than not, flying off into the city and sneaking into facilities per her request to gather materials, classified documents she couldn’t _technically_ publish, but that granted greater context to the story as a whole.

As of early March, when the second bout of the year was scheduled, Cat had discovered much about the Sinclair Trust, Roulette’s slave-trade, Maxwell’s experiments, and the U.S. Military’s involvement in the entire affair. When she explained the heart of it to me, that the military was looking to contract a company for alien experimentation, both Lord’s and Roulette’s presences made sense. And it became clearer with each passing day that Maxwell Lord, vile and pompous as he was, was _winning_. Roulette, knowing the Sinclair’s company could not keep pace with Lord’s advancements, would take the leftovers of the bouts after Max had finished harvesting all he needed from them. His methods might have left them catatonic, or mute, or a shell of their former selves, which Roulette realized made excellent slaves (not the catatonic ones, though I shudder to think about the cannibalistic societies who pay high prices for alien bodies).

Earth, the place so many travelers considered refuge, had now become one of the primary ports of call for those operating within the alien slave trade—and the not-so-shocking twist to it all?

The entire affair had been sanctioned by the U.S. military.

“Lord’s timeline for production is faster, and his labs have a better turn-around time on producing the chemicals needed to— _subdue_ aliens once they lose their bout. Once they’re knocked out, they’re taken into custody by Lord’s goons, and then…” Cat let her fingers wave through the air in a hopeless gesture of finality.

Cat was on the balcony of her office one Sunday morning in March, her white button-up crisp and tailored, tucked into jeans that clung and flattered her slim figure. Carter was with his father that weekend but, thankfully, was also back in school, since Roulette seemed more concerned with hosting the battles than eliminating someone who had done little more than cause her some frustration roughly six months previous. With all of her various lives and whatnot, Cat seemed ‘off the hook’ from Roulette’s assassination attempts.

But that did not mean Cat, myself, and M’gann had not been working diligently to confirm all of Cat’s suspicions. Our reconnaissance included several hasty trips to Lord’s labs, as well as to a military base in the Mojave Desert. It was exhilarating, the infiltrations, the surreptitious investigative measures; and Cat’s guiding hand directed each forthcoming move, each request for an envelope with a big red stamp— _CONFIDENTIAL_ —marked across each file-folder. It had been some time since I had taken orders from another, but one part of being a general is letting others do their jobs, especially if they can do them _well_ , which means the mission gets completed in the end. We had not yet been detected, so no further attempts had been made on Cat’s life. Combine the ease with my time at the shop and the drudgery of my dissertation proposal, and I dared to say life was returning to _normal_.

“The Sinclairs started off trying to compete with Lord,” Cat continued, adding a packet of raw sugar to her mug, then swirling the contents with a tiny silver spoon. “They put bids in with the military to create those chemical-filled batons that were taking down the Hellgrumites and Silurians, the ones you saw the first night we met, Astra? But they can’t beat Max on production, on innovation—if he wasn’t torturing people, I’d be impressed by his business model, broaching the divide between research and profit.”

“So… where do we go from here?” M’gann asked, face contorted in something of a grimace as she reached for the plate of breakfast butter. I did not offer to help, for M’gann always felt embarrassed if I did, but she had taken quite the beating in the last bout. She won, thankfully, but each and every fight wore her down further and further, harsh enough that even Cat took notice. M’gann and I were nearly pitted against each _other_ , and, with Max’s knowledge of our connection, I was sure there was only a matter of time before Max suggested Roulette do just that.

“Again, everything they’re doing is completely legal,” Cat muttered, tucking her legs up underneath her and bringing her coffee into her chest. Her lipstick prints shone a bright, pinkish-nude against the white ceramic glaze, a strange detail, but nevertheless one that seems ingrained within me as I recall that morning. How… delicate, she looked, with sheer make-up and fine china for breakfast. I considered Cat a friend, but it wasn’t until that morning that I learned of her history, that I think I… truly respected her. “Once I publish this story, any decent press secretary and/or company branding executive will have their CEO throw themselves upon their own swords and bow to the mercy of public opinion.”

“I hope your story is as powerful as you believe it will be,” I muttered, flipping through a glossy magazine with bags and clothing, with journals and nail polish and diet tips and—a disclaimer for disturbing images? A… a machine gun, and a tank? Cat was so adamant that merely _publishing_ something could turn the tide of public opinion—that the power of a free, informed and trusted press would spread pro-alien sentiments like California wildfire, and would thus leave Roulette without a leg to stand upon. But to see her go from such flashy commodities to images of war with a mere turn of the page… I wondered at the disparity in subject matter.

“Cat, did you ever…” I looked down at the headline very quickly, _A Woman’s Place_ , and noted that each solider, each officer, bedecked in enough equipment to sink them down into the sands that they roamed, was a woman. “…were you ever at… war?”

“Desert Shield, four months between ’90 and ‘91,” Cat said, placing her mug back down and turning to study my reaction. I must have looked extremely surprised, because she continued. “What? You think I couldn’t handle it?”

“I just… you do not seem like the type…”

“Well, graduating top of your class from Radcliffe Journalism gives you a bit of an ego boost. Of course, I was scared shitless once I got there, writing for myself, even before the _Planet_.” Cat trailed off momentarily and looked out over the edge of her skyscraper, into the clear blue of the morning. “It’s where I met Lois.”

“Lois Lane,” I repeated, for I had heard the name one too many times fall from her lips. “Kal-El’s partner.”

“Mine first,” Cat winked, popping a chopped bit of strawberry into her mouth.

“Your… partner?”

“Partner, frenemy, lover—we were 22 and terrified and so very out of our depth.”

“How so?” I asked.

“Young and full of ourselves,” Cat smirked. “I had my head so far up my ass I just knew I needed to write about the economic sanctions in the Middle East, and the offensive, well, the actual bombings… it was a short time between the Kuwait invasion and the aerial campaigns.”

Cat wiped at her mouth with her napkin and tucked a straight blonde lock of hair behind her ear and then paused momentarily to stare down at her coffee. I don’t know what she saw there, but no war is easy. It resurfaces in coffee and lipstick stains more suddenly than one might ever imagine.

“Lois and I… met by happenstance. We shouldn’t have been there, but we quickly learned we were similar in ways none of my previous peers were. Alone, oceans and battles away from home, it’s no wonder we latched onto each other—something familiar, almost, narcissistic even, seeing so much of ourselves in one another. She was already representing _The Planet_ and I… I was just trying to make a name for myself. When we both made it out alive, she was the one who got me the assistant position with Perry,” Cat tapped her fingernail against the tabletop, then continued. “Honestly, I learned more about reporting on real, living people in those four months than I did in four years at a fancy journalism school in New York.”

“Lois and… you fought together, or, well… you found solace in each other?”

Cat nodded, but offered nothing more.

“That is what Roulette would have revealed—initially, when she threatened you, she said something to the affect of knowing about your history with Lois,” I slowly put the pieces together. “Your being… lovers? Would that truly impact your career to the point of dismantling all the good you’ve done?”

“Hardly,” Cat tittered, tossing her hair back over her shoulder. “Which is why the shooting happened, I suppose. I wasn’t going to keep my mouth shut just so she wouldn’t feed the paps the lesbian lovers story from all that time ago—if anything, it would’ve likely boosted sales for me, as I would’ve had to write a response.”

“So she just came after you,” M’gann said. “But… she doesn’t think you’re doing anything, or… there’s been no further attempts…”

“You must admit, two unsuccessful attempts is enough to shake even the hardest of hearts.”

“Your heart is anything but hard, Cat,” I protested, putting a hand on her forearm. I squeezed gently, for I had learned to relegate my powers when touching humans, when touching Alex—no, best not to let those thoughts distract me. “You are safe until you run that story. If she discovers you are still working on it—”

“Just don’t get caught retrieving any information I request,” Cat replied easily. Her eyes cut toward my fingers on her arm. “Thank you, that’s quite enough of that.”

“My apologies, I merely meant to comfort you.”

“Yes, well…” Cat waved against the air with her free hand and turned her nose upward (I do not like to point this out quite so often, but I find that Kara, in her various positions at CatCo over the years, has been granted the liberty of touching her ‘Ms. Grant’ in myriad fashions. I think Carter and Kara are the only ones to have received a full embrace from the woman in many years).

I withdrew without protest, but I felt my sentiment had been expressed as adequately as it could have been.

“What of the new location?” I asked, refilling my own mug with another cup from the French press. “That poor man looked as if his heart was bursting when the metahuman shattered his basketboards.”

“No invitation pending for April as of yet, so Roulette must still be spinning her wheels. If she doesn’t do _something_ soon, her patrons will get bored and go back to dog fighting.”

M’gann and I both tensed at the mention, but Cat plowed forward: “There’s enough real-estate developers in that crew of sharks that Roulette could tap, but honestly, she needs to build a facility. You must admit her events are rather specialized, and have grown too large to hold in many places in the city without drawing unwanted attention.”

“Maybe it will dissolve of its own accord,” M’gann said hopefully.

“Roulette might scheme for something grander, but I do not imagine the military would like to relinquish such a cheap model for experimentation and discovery,” I said. “Nor Maxwell Lord, for that matter, if he is as involved as you insist.”

“I’m on track with some of my follow-ups for the piece,” Cat said, steering the conversation back to the article she’d been working on for months. “I have to be discreet, which is taking time… but I’ve got enough verifiable sources on deep background that I trust to run with this. Another month or so, and we should be ready.”

“And in the meantime?” M’gann asked.

“Keep doing what you’re doing, and pray the real estate market remains uncooperative,” Cat said, retrieving her cell phone and drawing our Sunday brunch to a close.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“Hey, uh, Ashley? Can I talk to you for a sec?” Jeremiah asked, removing milk from the refrigerator and filling a steam pot.

I had already returned change to the lone patron at the counter during the morning slump around 10:15 a.m.—over the March Spring Break—so few students were in-and-out of the shop at all hours. Jeremiah continued to steam the milk, pour, and serve, and I simply waited against the back counter, dish towel thrown over my shoulder and hands crossed over my chest. I’d spent the better portion of the previous evening reviewing my notes on various air samples collected while I flew over portions of the city. It was helping with my final project on city smog and pollution, and I had devoted several hours that might have been better spent sleeping to converting the data into something my professor could understand.

“Is there something I can help you with, Jeremiah?”

“Maybe, if you’re up for it,” he said, rinsing out the steam pot and letting it rest on the drying mat. “Well, I’d… it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while now, but, uh, I don’t really want to violate your privacy or anything, since you’ve been so good to us—”

“If this is about Alex, I told you that I’m fine. It’s been months, all of you must really stop insisting I ‘get back out there’,” I said, adding just enough condescension that I hoped he’d take the hint to stop nosing about with my personal life.

“Oh, no that’s—that’s not it at all,” he said, reaching for his pocket. “I know, no phones on shift, but I wanted to show you—”

He held up a photo of himself in a pressed button-up shirt and navy blue tie, smiling in front of the UCNC sign. His arms were hitched on his hips and text had been super-imposed over the photo in blocky white script:

_Charismatic and Caffeinated: Vote Jeremiah Cumberland for Student Government President_

“This is just the first look,” he muttered, swiping left to a similar picture with a different font. “I’m going to need a running mate.”

“Oh, are—is this your two weeks notice?” I asked him, somewhat confused by what he was presenting. He already held a lower-level position in the student government and it did not alter his schedule that much. “They are very nice photos,” I said, for I had seen some of the interesting campaigns led for student government positions in previous semesters and they had not matched Jeremiah’s quality.

“What? No! My schedule will have to change if I win—there’s standing councils meetings every other Wednesday evening for a few hours but, uh, Ashley, see… see I was, uhm… wondering if you’d be my VP.”

“Vee…I’m sorry, I don’t think I under—”

“I need a running mate for student council, and I think it would be really awesome if we could break the classist voting blocks all the fraternities and sororities have in place,” Jeremiah said seriously. So serious it… it was not an attitude I had seen on him, all that much. “And to have a queer black guy and a—again, don’t mean to be all up in your business but, uh… lesbian non-trad student,"

"I think the term is 'bi-sexual'," I said, for I really wasn't quite sure myself.

"Oh, well, sure!" Jeremiah continued. "But you're aformer vet and small business owner—that kind of ticket would get _real_ press, not just the student paper or anything. People who go to this school would actually _vote_ , and we could put some things in place around campus that would be better for everybody.”

“… you want me to run for political office as your vice-president?”

“I mean, at the school, yeah,” Jeremiah said, tapping once more at his phone, bringing up a list—a _long_ list—of ideas he’s sketched out for campus improvement.

“You do realize your platform will need to be cut significantly if you have any chance of appealing to the masses whose attention spans wander so much they rarely hear when we call their names for a latte.”

Jeremiah ducked his head and scrolled _again_ , continuing on with his list. “Yeah, I mean… I, uh, the PR aspect of it—I’ve got friends in Comm/Mark studies, could be on the cabinet. I just… as you can see, I’ve got some big ideas.”

“Obviously,” I smiled knowingly, somewhat proud for his big dreams, even if he was, perhaps, a little overzealous.

“But that’s why it would be good to have you… you’re older—”

“Watch it.”

“Well, older _than me_ ,” he said. “And I think you’ve got a sense of just what it takes to really get stuff done. You work a whole lotta hours up here, you could always hire more help to replace the little time it would take out of your week to go to the meetings and attend the events… I just think you’ve got a great mind for it, and it might look good on your resume.”

I twirled my finger about the coffee shop, as if he didn’t understand I already owned a business. 

“Please, you might be here for now, but you’re getting a degree in something I can’t even pronounce,” he insisted. “Serve as much coffee as you want, Ashley, but you’re a lot smarter than latte art and cool brew.”

“This is time consuming though, isn’t it?” I asked, for I had seen the bedraggled undergrads in their junior and senior years coming in five minute before close to order a take-away gallon of dark roast. “I don’t mean to belittle your own work, but I cannot simply not pull hours at the shop, or attend to studies in the lab…” _or skip out on any fights Roulette might hold in future, once she acquires a fighting facility._

“Just the campaigning from now until April eighteenth is... that's the most time-consuming bit,” he said. “And you wouldn’t have to do much. We’ll take some photos of you, narrow down our platform—there’s definitely a lot of ideas on here—you can give a speech, we’ll stick up all of our materials around campus, but if we win, we only meet every other Wednesday, like I do now!”

“Wait, we—these photos,” I asked, looking back down at the device in his hand. “We’d put them up around campus?”

“Everywhere!” he said happily. “Dorms, the Union, every hallway bulletin board of every class building, even around some of the shops on campus, here, obviously—”

“And my face would be on these?” I asked, just to make sure I was hearing him correctly. Pictures of my face, but only on campus, so only students would see me, none of Roulette's patrons...

“Yeah, we’d need to do a dual poster, so people know to vote for our ticket, then individuals to show I’m going for president, you for VP, and Chelsea was thinking of going for VP of Communications so we could—”

“I’ll do it,” I said, cutting him off suddenly.

“Seriously?!”

It never really occurred to me to make myself more visible on campus than I had been doing—when I’d first started the shop, Kara was the only thing on my mind. But then _life_ happened, school and friendships and work and love—that is, so many things that took up my time and I had never properly set the pieces in place apart from opening the shop to actually _get Kara to notice me_.

And with Alex out of school, I wouldn’t be violating any of the promises I made to her. I wouldn’t use her to find Kara, and as long as Kara was still _here_ —

There was no way beneath all Rao’s realm that Kara would ever forget my face. Not when she’d been taken from her mother so tragically.

“Can we put the shop’s number and address on the posters and, uh, any online campaigns we do?” I asked, wondering how much information I could provide about where to find me. “You know, to… to make sure the constituents can come and ask us questions about our platforms.”

“Oh my god— _definitely_!” Jeremiah said, hugging me so suddenly I could do nothing but stiffen in his arms and pat awkwardly at his back. “You’re _the best_ , Ashley!”

“Yes well… I’ll be finishing up my school work next year anyway,” I said, trying to downplay my own involvement in something I could tell was immensely important to him. I’d heard him whisper to Connie about working for toward this position during his senior year, how a higher seat on the student council—he was already Financial Secretary—would only work in his favor when applying for jobs in the city. “It will be nice to give back, and help a friend in the process,” I said.

“That’s… that’s just…” he wouldn’t stop smiling, and seemed ready to burst through the roof, which is why I didn’t think anything of his final questions.

“So you’re completely good to make the speeches and stuff?”

“I’ve done a lot of public speaking in my life,” I said, turning back to empty the espresso knock-box and stooping to retrieve more beans to fill the grinder.

“Back on your planet?”

“Primarily on the intergalactic cruisers, but occasionally at government conventions. Then in the High Council Hall for Ceremonies and Celebrations,” I answered, stood, then _realized_ ; thus I proceeded to rip the entire 5lb bag of espresso beans right in two.

“Oh my god Ashley, stop!” he babbled, heading for the backroom to grab the broom. I was fixed to the floor as if hit by one of the mental paralysis beams from the Saturnians, but Jeremiah merely griped about wasted beans. “If you freeze up when we’re in the debates, I swear to god—”

“Did… did you just ask—?”

“If you’re an alien? Yeah, I mean, I kinda figured, what with the levitating and all,” he said, bending down to brush the beans into the dust pan. “Just wanted to know for sure before I stake my political career on you as a running partner.”

“…you’re running for student council,” I muttered. “That is hardly a political office.”

“Ashley,” he said, standing and propping one knowing hand on his hip. “I can’t tell you the last time they had a normal person on the board. It’s always some senator’s kid, or some son of an alumni athlete.”

“I’m not concerned with _that_ ,” I said. “How did you know I was…”

“I don’t care, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he interrupted. “Just… I work with you a lot so _I_ notice, but if we want to keep it a secret, you should really talk to Connie and the gang.”

“WE?! What is we--wait, _they_ know, too?!”

“There’s no way a real human can get as much stuff done as you do on the regular, and before 7 a.m. at that,” he said, setting the broom aside. “Again, if it’s a secret, I’ll keep it, I just…” he shrugged, smiled guilelessly, and stooped down to retrieve another bag of espresso beans, ones that didn’t go exploding across the floor this time. “… there’s a lot riding on this for me. I like to know who I’m partnering with. Would kinda like to know what’s in it for you,” he said.

“I—”

I didn’t get a chance to finish, because the phone rang abruptly.

“I’m not finished,” I told him, crossing toward the wall to remove the handset from the cradle. “Brigadier’s Brewers,” I said into the mouthpiece.

“Astra?”

“Cat?”

“Bad news.”

“Great,” I said, letting my head fall into the wall in front of me. The wood gave a little and I’m sure Jeremiah heard the _creak_ , which, really wasn’t helping me hide my identity from my coworkers. “Roulette?”

“Yes, but not a bout.”

“Are you hurt? Where’s Carter?”

“We’re all fine, but it seems Roulette has changed the name of the game. No fight this month, but that doesn’t mean the aliens won’t have to earn their keep.”

“What’s she looking to do now?” I asked, brows furrowing as thoughts whizzed through my mind.

What in Rao’s name could Roulette have possibly thrown together without a venue for the fights?

“A party,” Cat said.

“A… I’m sorry, a party?” I asked for clarification. “How is that any different than what they do prior to the bouts in the first place?”

“Well, the aliens aren’t usually invited to partake in the festivities.”

“And I’m guessing we are now, is that it?”

“I think Maxwell Lord might want to see you in a dress again,” Cat grumbled. “It’s on Friday, April nineteenth,” Cat said (I noted, quiet distantly and in some strangely removed sense, that that was the turn-in date for the first draft of my semester research project). “She’s already been one month without an event, she can’t risk another.”

I sighed heavily and fell back against the wall, disliking the idea _immensely_. What could rich humans want from us? We were animals to them, fighting in cages—what were we there for besides entertainment? Were we supposed to speak with them, be amicable, charming… was this part of Roulette’s hold over the rest of her fighters?

“I’ve called M’gann already,” Cat said, jolting me back to the conversation. “You both need to be there, though you might not draw as much attention as the non-humanoids in suits and cocktail dresses.”

“Some of your fashions violate religious tenants of the fighting species,” I protested.

“I hardly think Roulette cares,” she answered. “April nineteenth. Write it down.”

“Very well,” I said, hanging up dejectedly.

“I can’t believe you’re friends with Cat Grant,” Jeremiah told me, counting out our tips to split from the tip jar, before Connie checked in for the eleven o’clock shift to take his place. “You think she’d help with our campaign?”

“No,” I said, because I very much knew she wouldn’t.

“Bummer,” he said, and resumed his counting. “That’s alright. We’ll party hard that Thursday when we win.. nine-fifty, ten-fifty... since we’re both running, you think we could host the after-party here once they announce the results on the Quad?”

“The… the after party?”

“On the eighteenth? he said. “After the election’s over, they’ll let people know… bout eleven or so, I think? Kinda fun, staying up, listening for the results.”

“The eighteenth? Of April?”

“Yeah.”

“My research project is due at 8 a.m. on Friday,” I griped.

“So maybe you don’t host,” Jeremiah said. “We’ll find a different venue.”

_Venue_.

Like Roulette found, for a party the very next night, where aliens and humans would be mingling and conversing and drinking. We still had much of March to finish out, and so the campaign would begin soon. But after mid-terms, and with these obligatory events stacked so close together in April, I felt more like a grad student than I ever had before. But in the end, I’d have posters everywhere on this campus, posters with my face—something Kara could find and see and know… know for certain that I was alive… I’d have to find a way to print something that she would see as signal, that she would know I was _looking for her_ …

And then the party. The party to satisfy Roulette’s need for control over her fighters. The ones where she made them parade before her moneymakers like animals in a circus, noting how well-behaved and civil we could be when we weren’t pummeling each other into pulpy bits of alien flesh.

There would be aliens, _lots_ of aliens, and humans in close quarters. And where there were aliens and humans, oftentimes, there was also an organization known as the Department of Extranormal Operations.

DEO operatives went undercover at the party. I couldn’t have known then, but the place was teeming with special agents. They didn’t make a move to shut everything down, but they were there, collecting intel, studying the fighters, figuring out just how many so-called ‘hostiles’ Roulette had at her disposal. The answer was two. Of the twenty or so fighters she had in her manipulative clutches, only two fought to sate their bloodlust. Others were coerced in one way or another, and it took my heated testimony to reveal such information.

Oh, and I’m sure your interested to know if a certain someone was in attendance.

She was.

But that night at the party, as Alex would put it, she really fucking pissed me off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> finally in to the final act, here. Hoping to finish up sometime in June, but that might be an EXTREMELY hopeful estimation on my writing schedule, which is basically non-existent at this point. saw something about general danvers week, and will do my best to participate! in the meantime, enjoy cat mgann and astra scheming on taking down some terrible anti-alien human peoples
> 
> thanks for everything y'all--you readers have made my experience with these little-loved side characters great, even if the show's gone south


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for non-con sexual situations and mentions of rape, poison, blood and intense action; seriously readers, it's the worst of her. tread very carefully.

I did not pay much heed to the bottom floor of Maxwell Lord’s skyscraper the last time I was there, primarily because Cat, M’gann and I were so concerned with getting out. Now, however, myself, Cat, and M’gann were all going back in, dressed in clothing that shimmered and clung, gauzy fabrics and too-high heels that Cat insisted upon for attending a _soiree_ of this degree. There had been some instruction with the invitation this time in regards to dress; Cat had originally placed orders with several personal shoppers on retainer, but most of the carefully selected gowns and sashes and accessories had been disregarded when Cat glanced once more at the invitation.

**_Aliens and Humans: The Center Ring  
_ **

_Lower Floor of Lord Technologies_

_Friday, April 19_

_Formal dress in black or white required_

So black and white we wore.

It was April and the chill of spring was lessening by the day. I had turned in my final project on air pollutants in residential sectors of National City that very morning, after a harrowing night at Jeremiah’s side as we awaited the results of the student election. Despite my presence in various institutions around the campus that I did not habitually frequent (the student union, the dorm lobbies, the buildings housing the Departments of Business, Language, Engineering, Communication and Rhetoric, Philosophy, Social Sciences, Education, etc.) not once did I see Kara. My sister’s face stared back at me from posters in which I posed rigidly beside Jeremiah, but not many took notice.

The only other time I had stood still for some sort of rendering was when Dar-Al painted my General’s portrait. For nearly two years, it hung in the Defensive Council’s Great Hall, on the same floor as the office they gave me upon my promotion to General.

I did not frequent the small apartment the High Council bestowed upon me as part and parcel of my ascension, for I was needed far more at the base than the Hall of Defense. But on occasion, Alura would visit me there, as the Judgement Hall was within the same sector of the city, and it was pleasant to meet up with her, just the two of us, to sneak a glass of Arcadian wine in the middle hour of the day after particularly challenging meetings with our respective departments. She would often comment that my view was better as we looked out over Argo City, similar, now that I recall, to the way Cat looked out over her dominion in California. She swore to protect her city in the same way Alura and I both pledged ourselves to Krypton; perhaps that is why I gravitated toward Cat, despite her occasionally irksome tendencies. Perhaps I saw something of Kara in Carter—their names even had similar phonetic elements—and Kara was of roughly the same age, last I saw her, as Carter was when I met him.

Nevertheless, my portrait had been taken down, I’m sure, once I was imprisoned in Rozz. I wonder now, what might have happened to it. Did Alura destroy it, so that my memory wouldn’t haunt her? Did she fight for it, rage against the rest of the council to keep what little memory of me they would allow her to have? As I grew closer with M’gann and Cat, I found myself missing my sister even more. They were support and strength and smarts when I needed them, but they weren’t my twin; they could never be half of me.

(It is a struggle, even still, to not fall into bouts of sadness without her, especially when Kara says something and I see Alura—a flicker of her—in my niece’s eye. Kara holds others accountable in similar ways that Alura did as a reporter now, and I know, I tell her often, how proud her mother would be of her, and how proud I am of her for all she has done).

Even so, despite my desperate attempts to get my face out there, Kara never contacted me.

On the day of Max and Roulette’s party, I turned my final paper in to a disgruntled professor who had given little guidance with regards to my proposal; I strolled off campus and noted that the facilities staff had taken razor blades to the windows, scraping the scotch tape we had used to hang our posters so carefully within the sight-lines of the students on campus. A sightline which—barring any unforeseen blindness that might have occurred upon entry into the Earth’s atmosphere—Kara would have followed directly toward my photo.

But that was not the case.

It was difficult not to feel low after my most recent endeavor at reaching out. Alex had indicated last semester that Kara was still in school; how could she have missed me? Was there… was there a chance that she’d forgotten what I’d looked like (what Alura looked like)? Had Alex already cut her off, forewarned her of my attempts to reach out? Did Kara—had she been poisoned with the lies of the High Council? Did she think me a traitor?

Did she even want to see me again?

To top it all off, my performance as a vice-presidential candidate for human student government went over rather worse than poorly, even though I’ve held high office, well, over an entire _planet._ Over the past month, I had debated no less than three times on campus, and, each time, I was met with blank stares from my so-called constituents. My answers to such proposed questions as ‘why is the freshman year meal plan necessary?’ and ‘which singer/songwriter band/group should we contract for next fall’s Flash Football Friday?’ were met with questions of my own, pertaining to such matters as the student services budget, incoming freshman and spectator numbers, retention rates, zoning restrictions and alcohol licensure, and all sorts of other technicalities I had studied up on thinking I would come out victorious in such trivial debates; however, my opponent said that freshman meal plans were a ‘scam’ and that we should obviously contract a Mr. Bruno Mars as our opener because he is, “fly as hell.” Both answers were met with thunderous applause while metaphorical cicadas—no _crickets_ —chirped in the auditorium after my answers.

I did not particularly care, because Jeremiah swooped in behind me to add panache and context to my stilted answers. I also did not particularly care because in the crowd of college attendees at the debates, Kara did not stand up and call out to me.

As is the case when I attempt to do anything remotely human, there had been some _irregularities_ in the running of our campaigns, Jeremiah and I had been told, so we would not know the results until the end of the following week, once the university cabinet convened and decided to proceed.

Despite my disappointment at not finding Kara, it was honestly the furthest thing from my mind that night.

I shifted anxiously in the back seat of Cat’s service car, wearing a curious pantsuit of white from head to toe. My hair was piled atop my head like some dollop of chocolate cream I might serve as a side dish at the shop. M’gann looked resplendent in a tailored, polka-dotted smock that belied her characteristic intensity, and Cat what she termed as her go-to little black dress. We exited the car as soon as Cat’s driver opened the door and ascended the concrete steps to Max’s building, a structure created from brick and steel and egomania, with an added twist thrown in from a designer who might have worked on stage dressings for _The Bold and the Beautiful_ —Cat’s words, not mine.

Oddly enough, we were asked to wear the masks again upon entry, but this times, they offered us selections of color: white, or crimson, or ebony, painted with silver and golden stripes, or spackled with small jewels, edged in lace and molded so as to slip perfectly overtop our brows and settle on the bridges of our noses. It was a strange courtesy bestowed upon the alien guests; as we sauntered into the expansive atrium, I hardly expected the curious display of décor and arrangement Max and Roulette had constructed for our arrival.

It was a circus.

Not a metaphorical circus, not something Cat would term haphazard and nonsensical, but instead a _circus_. An alien from Maldren spewed fire from her mouth behind bars in one corner of the room; human contortionists held themselves in painfully queer positions atop conical platforms painted black and white and blood red. A handful of servers lumbered about the four-story atrium on stilts that forced us to crane our necks skyward. They would lower their trays of sumptuous selections down to our levels with complicated pulley-and-wire contraptions, so that once the server retracted his or her load, the guest could only look up in puzzlement to figure which of the powder-faced stilt-men had carried the sweet load of caramelized apple slices.

Trays and tables at more manageable levels were likewise overflowing with bite-sized hors d’oeuvres like warm and savory pretzels, salted and skewered and slathered in an appropriate amount of mustard that the American bourgeoisie might still feel comfortable eating them; the heavy smells of butter and sugar and cloves wafted through the space, so concentrated in some areas I assumed the hosts had requisitioned a machine for the evening solely used for pumping scents into the room.

And what a room it was.

Curtains, sheer, opaque, glimmering, hung from four and five and six stories above, the windows of Max’s atrium hardly reflecting the easy light from stars, but nevertheless providing that darkening effect of a magical twilight. Navigating between the curtains was a memory challenge; for as soon as one turned to discover what lurked behind one billowing swath of fabric, one had lost her way from where she’d originally started. M’gann, Cat and I stuck close and milled through the sea of bodies, drunk on dark red wine and spicy bourbon drinks, an interesting selection for spring, usually so fresh and crisp.

“Careful,” Cat mumbled, and thankfully, she did not have to speak loudly for either of us to hear her. “It’s fairly common knowledge that things are not always as they seem in the circus.”

I for one could never picture Maxwell Lord in a top hat and black tailcoat, but there he stood: clad in a satin silver waistcoat with a gold change draped over his chest pocket. The ensemble drew attention to the gold cufflinks at his wrists, the cock of his top hat. It was disorienting and bizarre. He was gesturing grandly, flocked by adoring guests all suitably masked, but not him—his face was open for all and I struggled for the term, the title, what it was that they called the man that lead the entire production.

_Ringmaster._

“Okay, remember, pictures if you can get them…” Cat mumbled again, lifting a flute of champagne with bobbing berries from a server in a plain black mask who disappeared as quickly as a dove up a magician’s sleeve. “We stay no longer than we have to, and we check in every fifteen minutes. This set up just looks like some sort of trap.”

“The golden curtain in the middle,” I nodded toward the draped fabric that ballooned outward from the center of Max’s large foyer, creating something of a main tent that spectators—alien _and_ human alike—ambled in and out of in varying states of inebriation. “We should… that should be our rendezvous. Though I do not like the thought of you going off on your own, Cat.”

“We all three shouldn’t stick together, though,” M’gann insisted. “We already have something of a reputation.”

“Trade-offs, then,” I said, tugging Cat to my side before she could protest. “No arguing, Cat.”

“I wasn’t about to. If I get stuck in a hall of mirrors and my vertigo starts acting up again, you better catch me.”

We broke away from M’gann and stuck to the outskirts of the party. It was so strange, seeing aliens in formal human dress, tuxedos and gowns, sometimes adorned with accessories that denoted their alien origin. I did not see all of the aliens who had fought in the matches in previous months, such as Stylsors, or Frulls; human raiment as we wore violated religious and cultural tenants of those species, so I wondered if they were given the choice not to attend. I could not tell if our _own_ attendance was being recorded…it must have been, for Roulette would not let her prizes escape from their obligations without some record of their complicity. But I noted that only the humanoids were suitably attired; any aliens with visible signs of being just that—alien—were not dressed as I was, adorned with masks and allowed to mill about and rub elbows with the very people who’d placed bets on their heads a few short months ago.

Almost as if she was…separating, classifying, giving the humanoids free rein when other species were… well… where were the other species?

Even in the back hallways, the rooms had been done up to mimic the interior of tented coverings; lanterns hung from the ceiling and plush couches had been lined up near the walls. The Starhaven boy I had seen at my very first match had been stripped of his usual attire and stuffed into a purple and gold vest with bedazzled patterns on the outside, a hideous swami-like turban placed atop his head and a crystal ball set before him on the table. He intoned futures, I guess, or flipped cards with grotesque animations on them, telling people what they wanted to hear and listening in with some convoluted earpiece from the telepath strumming on the handheld autoharp in the corner. Cat was able to take pictures discreetly with her phone; I told her to look to the entertainment, for most if not all of the acts seemed to be alien. Another few passes through the maze of rooms and curtains, and I could confirm my suspicions: only the humanoid aliens were dressed in human attire, and even then, they had been paired off with spectators, almost as if… almost as if they’d been assigned to _escort_ the humans about the circus.

Back to the atrium, and the daring acts began—trapeze artists flew from spindly poles overhead without a net below; one of the high-flyers seemed to be part lizard, considering he clung to the bar by his tail more so than with his hands. The jugglers tossed fire and exploding bits and bobs, showering those on the outskirts of the small ring with golden confetti. Some strange mechanical automaton rolled a funnel cake cart into the middle of the floor and began drizzling something sweet and sticky atop the breaded treats; drunk humans flocked toward the cart and relieved the robot of its snack-cakes. Lemonade burbled in a fountain at a center table that had been decorated with platinum goblets that seemed ridiculously oversized for the affair; then again, I saw a server adding an entire bottle of vodka to the concoction, and amended my consideration… perhaps the cups were not deep enough.

“How many photos have you taken?”

“Only thirteen, but it’s rather difficult with security posted at every curtain.”

“Those are the servers,” I told Cat.

“Most servers I know don’t wander about with ear pieces.”

“Then why are they carrying the trays?” I asked, periscoping my head about to catch a glimpse of the admittedly trim and strong-looking catering staff. Most kept their heads down, but their eyes were alert, dressed in pressed white shirts, long, slim black ties and black trousers, the women with their hair tied back in low pony tails, the men with their shirt-sleeves rolled up exactly to their elbows. I observed uniformity and precision and an attention to neatness that looked almost militaristic. In and out amongst the guest, never lingering longer than was usual for a server, and yet, something about the way they carried themselves, how their own hands moved as effortlessly with their trays, brushing at their hips, almost as if they were reaching for—

“Not servers…” I mumbled, gritting my teeth as I scanned the nearest body for a sidearm. Not at the hip, but tucked at the ankle. Another gun there, on the girl with the mini-corndog platter; and yet another shoved into the waist band of the lead caterer, a middle-aged black man dressed in the customary pressed shirt and black slacks, save for his black and silver bow-tie and the curled wiring over his ear, speaking into a handset that had been shoved all the way down his sleeve. Upon his mumbling for more napkins in sector B, two women in black masks scurried around a curtain and began loading their trays with cutlery and triangle napkins of red, white, and black. One woman with a pixie cut and efficient movements took the lead, while the other behind her took her cues; she had cropped hair and a stubborn tilt to her chin, brown eyes the color of earth shining behind her mask, and a tattoo at the small of her back that I had seen on only one prior occasion, one somber morning in November.

“Have you seen the middle tent?” M’gann dragged us by our wrists over to a secluded spot near the glass wall to make sure no one was lurking behind the draped tapestries.

“No,” Cat said curtly, nodding toward the back hallways from which we’d just emerged.

“They have the non-humanoids trussed up like sideshow freaks,” Cat griped, though she didn’t dare reach for her phone.

“It’s worse in the main tent,” M’gann said, shutting her eyes as if it might help her focus. In the crowd, I heard high, whistling pipes that worked the guests into a fever pitch. “They’re dancing now, but it was… it was strange, difficult to hear… there’s—there’s a psychic energy I can’t pinpoint,” M’gann looked back over her shoulder toward the center tent, and tried to suppress a shudder. “It’s almost… I daresay it feels like _martian_ energy, but I know better. Everything was so cramped in the tent, but the bidding went higher—”

“Bidding?” I asked. “On fights?”

“On _aliens_ ,” M’gann said. “And the tools Roulette has developed to control them.”

“ _What_?!” Cat snapped, loud enough to turn heads from the few masked spectators skipping round the grand steam calliope emitting eerie carnival music beside one of the alcohol fountains. “That’s… that’s human trafficking.”

“Alien trafficking,” M’gann corrected. “Just as you’ve been saying from the start of it all… nothing technically illegal.”

“It’s barbaric,” Cat seethed.

“It’s _Roulette_ ,” M’gann said. “She’s dressed herself as some morbid lion-taming character. There were—they had to perform tasks and she… she whipped them, Cat.”

“We’re leaving,” Cat declared, but I pulled her back, too intrigued by the woman taking the napkins to sector B, too infuriated by Roulette’s wicked entertainment, too bewildered by Max’s atypical costume, too engrossed by the servers with the firearms holstered to the inside of their ankles.

“We need evidence of such barbarism,” I said. “If you want incriminating, there’s nothing more grotesque than auctioning off a being’s liberty, Cat. Give me your phone.”

“Why?”

“You’re not going in that closed-off space,” M’gann said, and I was grateful that she and I were on the same page. “It’s dark, and crowded unless you’re in the large middle ring; it would be too easy for one of us to lose you. Let Astra handle this.”

“You at least know how to take the flash off, right?” Cat huffed, clearly peeved, but knowing we spoke sensibly. “Thirty minutes,” Cat insisted, looking at her phone before handing it over. “And we all leave together or we don’t leave at all.”

“You go with her this time,” I told M’gann, tucking Cat’s phone in my palm. “Best of luck, you two. Stay out of trouble.”

I slid through the sea of masks and approached the center tent. The strains of the calliope followed me like a lyrical shadow—it was nothing like the Spotify channels I heard on the wireless speaker back at the shop. In fact, the campus, the shop, Krypton, even—it all seemed so distant and removed from the incongruousness of this place.

I could feel the psychic energy M’gann spoke of; something brewing, something more than cider and wine and lemonade and cherry cola—something like resentment over such treatment, of being debased, of being poked with the equivalent of cattle prods and shocked into action one-time too many. All of this sugar-coated spectacle was the final straw, and I could sense the beginnings of rot and decay, of unraveling seams. The alien humanoids in masks stood still and haunted; others trussed up in frilly costumes looked downright murderous. Rippling beneath the skin, at the edge of that fantastic carnival sound, talons scratched concrete and foreign muscles tensed.

Ready for action. Ready for riot.

In the tent, in the dark, human couples twirled on the dance floor through the straight edges of spotlights beams. Champagne flowed from crystal fountains on the outside of the domed circle. Within the middle was a large performance ring (not a three-ring circus, for the place wasn’t quite _that_ expansive) with black and gold and silver circles spiraling in painted loops round the circumference and then narrowing into the center, producing a bizarre, dizzying, target-like effect. Merely watching the twirling couples made me nauseas.

“I’ve been looking for you.”

Maxwell, in his black top hat. A slightly dazed smile, flushed, perhaps more drunk than I had ever seen him. He approached me and doffed his hat, his white teeth shining, his presence, as always, cloying and suffocating.

“I cannot say the same,” I grumbled.

“Come now, you’re not having a good time?”

“This hardly seems like your… _theme_.”

“It is rather over-the-top, don’t you think?” he asked, twisting around. “Or… over the _big_ top?”

I shook my head and attempted to pass him, but he stepped in my way and placed his hand against my stomach.

“Roulette has her flights of fancy,” he said finally, gesturing once again and sweeping us into one of the spotlights of the ring at center. “Nothing about her is subtle, but then again, investors rarely want subtle.”

“Investors, now? I heard there was an auction taking place.”

“Not with your kind.”

“You know there is only one… one of me,” I told him, at which he tilted his head in careful study. Perhaps he wasn’t as drunk as I supposed.

“On this coast, any way,” he commented, sweeping into a deep bow, removing his hat, and, upon standing, he placed it right upon my head. “General Astra, might I have this dance?”

I was so stunned by the audacity I couldn’t muster the words for an outright refusal. “And take part in this… this abhorrent pageantry?!”

“I believe Veronica used the term, _whimsical_ ,” he smiled serenely, and looked at his pocket watch, as if his evening was proceeding precisely on schedule. “We only have a few minutes before the next round starts,” he said. “A dance, please.”

“The next round of what?” I asked, taking his hand despite my disgust, if only to see what he might reveal.

“Auctions,” he said, lifting my arm before him as he guided us through servers and between twirlers, into the stark brightness of the overhead spotlight. “You weren’t wrong about what you said, before. We’re… thinning the heard.”

“The weak, the damaged…” I bit my tongue and tried not to choke on my words. I felt my feet fumble as I recognized the triple meter—Alex had called it a _waltz_. But he forced me against him, chest to chest, his hand on my back, his smile, leering down at me. It felt indecent and solicitous, nothing like the matched dances of Krypton.

I was struck with the jarring realization that the last time I had danced, it had been with Alexandra.

“Now you’re getting the idea.”

I should have raged. I should have plucked his eyes from their sockets and left him crying blood on the dance floor for what he’d surely done to those aliens. And the worst of it was, I _knew_ , I knew that those prodded through the ring in a cavalcade of misery were broken beyond mending; for if no other planet would want them as slaves, what could they possibly bring to the humans besides non-threatening amusement? Aliens were bought and sold as leftovers… as _novelties_ , as bodies to dance when prodded and to be laughed at when shown to acquaintances; aliens as pets, in all their neutered exoticism. The ones coming through were safe enough to be owned by humans because… because…

They’d been tortured so badly even _humans_ could control them.

“I didn’t think your mood could take a turn for the worse,” Max said, slowing our pace and dipping low to speak against my ear when he must have known I hardly needed the courtesy (if one might call it that) to hear him. I could feel each of his fingers pressing against my spine, the warmth, the surety there. For all of his posturing against alien invaders he seemed far more susceptible to his vices than he let on—his pupils were wide and black when he looked down at me in the spotlight; such desire could not be attributed to champagne alone. His lust for power, for _me_ … I suppose he thought the atmosphere magical, when all I saw was cheap flare and exploitation.

“You know, your eyes aren’t really green, in the light,” he said softly, moving his hand from my back to touch my jaw, to brush his thumb over my cheek. I stood paralyzed at center of the endless loop of revelers, unable to move, unable to deck him, lest I be the catalyst for the riot. I almost… I almost wished for something to happen (something would), something to start the bloodshed that might put an end to all of this (something did, and it was me). But it my clear mind, even with Max groping my waist, I knew I would do nothing. Not with M’gann here, not with Cat. Let him take his liberties with me, but I swore not to be the cause of pain for my friends.

“Grey and shifting,” he murmured, tilting my chin up, disgustingly close to his whiskey-breath. “…like you can’t quite decide who you are.”

“I know _exactly_ who I am,” I said.

“Do you know you are exceedingly prideful?”

“There’s an English idiom about pots and kettles commenting on each other’s blackened outsides,” I remarked. “Though I believe your soul is just as black, orchestrating this—this travesty _._ Rest assured, I have been brought low and I await the day you fall.”

“I’m trying to protect my planet,” Max said. “Surely you can understand that.”

“There is a difference between being a planet’s defender and its aggressor,” I challenged him.

“Do you mean to tell me you were never the latter?”

“My mistakes are my own, and I atoned for them.”

“And what of your rewards, hmm? I have no doubt you… you must have been a great woman, back on Krypton—”

“You are not worthy to utter my planet’s _name_ —”

“Astra, please…I wasn’t blowing smoke when we spoke the other week.”

“When you _kidnapped_ me.”

“I was trying to talk about allies. About power. You, you’re powerful, and you’re beautiful, and together, we could—”

“Champagne?”

_Thank Rao_.

A server with excellent timing and a black mask appeared, but she also had short, dark hair… hair that was once long and tangled, that usually flowed over the collar of her leather jacket; it would tumble down from her shoulders from beneath the hem of my grey beanie hat and catch the glow from the twinkle lights outside my shop, where we’d first looked upon each other with fondness.

“Perfect timing,” Max nodded, nonplussed by the interruption. He dropped my hand and took a small step back, checked his watch from his pocket again, and then lifted two flutes from the tray. The server in the mask lingered between us, eyes averted, mumbling about the year and the region of the champagne, backing away into the shadows as Max lifted his hand and presented me with the glass.

“I don’t suppose we could toast to a partnership?” he asked.

“No,” I scowled, but took the proffered glass just to put more distance between us. Connie liked to watch those programs where women threw drinks into other’s faces, and I could suddenly see the appeal.

“Consideration, then? You can’t have thought great things at your initial arrival on our planet, but you’ve certainly made something of a life for yourself, if your current connections are any indication.”

“I will drink to your ruin,” I said, bringing the glass to my lips.

“Wait!”

Alex.

Alex in her mask, Alex taking the napkins to sector B, Alex with the com in her ear, with the ankle holster and some kind of knife shoved deeply in her pocket, just like the rest of the servers, the rest of the _human_ servers, who seemed just as on edge as the aliens corraled into Lord’s technological sideshow.

Alex, who I hadn’t seen in almost five months. Who kept sneaking knowing glances between myself and Lord as she mumbled about the champagne and somehow, kept increasing the distance between me and him.

“Excuse me, what is your prob—”

“He put something in your drink,” she said, breathless, the tray of glasses no longer in her hand, just a towel and a spotlight shining on her from above, shining on her scowl, sparking an intensity in her eyes that looked more vibrant than the sadness I’d seen when we’d called it off. “You did, you… you were palming something.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re trying to _drug_ her!”

“You’re out of line,” Max said. “What’s your name? They probably need you back in the kitchen.”

“Doesn’t matter, though, does it?” I asked him, stepping out from behind her. I felt Alex reach for me for the first time in months, but I couldn’t let if affect me.

I couldn’t let him know I knew her, especially not here, not in his territory.

“You keep talking about how ‘powerful’ I am,” I said, and lifted the flute in front of his face, so he would stop staring daggers at Alexandra. “To power, then, and the few who will be victorious at the end of all this.” I took a drink and gulped, then handed the flute back to Max. Alex gripped my wrist and tried to pull me away, but not before I issued my final warning. “Don’t approach me or my friends again, or I will kill you.”

I allowed Alex to pull me back and out of range of his anger; we ended up grouped towards the side of the tent, striding over the one-foot wall that demarcated the center circus ring from the outer ring where spectators stood. It was painted gold, white, and black, and seemed to be clearing out as the calliope music dwindled to whistling steams and the rest of the servers guided dancing guests round the edges. Each guest was given some type of card and number, though the handful I recognized as humanoids held nothing in their hands.

Though I was admittedly less concerned with the impending alien auctions than I was with my—ex-girlfriend?—and her newest career choice.

“What in Rao’s name are you doing here?” I snapped at her, feeling angrier and angrier with each step I took.

“What am I—what are _you_ doing here?!”

“No,” I growled, yanking her by the back of her pressed white caterer’s shirt, burying us further and further in the darkness until there was a good three feet of space between us and the nearest bidder. “You don’t get to—to just be here, not after everything I’ve been working for. I haven’t seen you in months, and I will not allow you to just… come in now and… and distract me.”

“I’m sorry, but Max Lord didn’t seem to be talking about long-term ecological standards for his plant, so I fail to see what you’re doing here at all.”

“You—you meddlesome… _human!_ ” I snapped. “I did not fight a Saturnian and have my mind invaded for you to come in here and undo all of the work we’ve put in for months.”

“Work? You and… wait, are you planning something?” Alex asked. “With Maxwell Lord?”

“Max Lord?” I scoffed, twitching a bit, clearing my throat to remove an annoying tingle. Everyone and everything suddenly felt stifling: Alex, here, confronting me as if I were the one who was out of place; Max and his smarmy, intractable nature; Roulette and her gleeful tortures; then there was the heat from the inside of this damnable tent; limited mobility wearing this—this silly suit I’d let Cat wrangle me into, like a human plaything. Everything pressed tight and close against my body, spurring me to take some action, flight, maybe, to burst from my skin and claw the tingling sensations off of my limbs.

“Please,” I rolled my eyes at Alex, for it was terribly transparent that Alex was on the job, that she’d only stepped in between myself and Max because she was jealous, because she didn’t like seeing someone with power take an interest in me. She’d refused me, and now… now she was being petty, though I was trying to remember, then, with all that time and distance between us, why I though her worthy in the first place. I returned to my discussion of Maxwell Lord, content to belittle him as much as I chose for the remainder of the evening. “That arrogant fool would be too entranced by his own reflection to look forward to anything worthwhile.”

“That still doesn’t explain why you—why… oh,” Alex said, her voice soft, her face obscured in the darkness. The flaps round the tent cocooned the spectators in dark stillness, no draft, just blackness, save for the single spotlight shining brightly down onto the far left of the circle at the tent’s entrance. The opening was obscured by a figure in silhouette; she strutted through the folded opening malicious curves, high heels, an elaborate hairstyle, and there, trailing behind her… the whip.

_Roulette_.

Alex moved beside me, readjusting something on her person. Even though Alex was here, even though I’d thought of her almost daily for months on end, I just… I didn’t seem to care. Something about seeing Roulette right across the room, knowing how easy it would be to fly forward and snap her puny neck, helped me to push thoughts of Alex to the side. It would be so much easier if I had my phaser, or my laser rifle. I was top markswoman for more years than any human agency could fathom; one well-placed bullet and this could all end tonight. But I was on this planet full of Neanderthals, with math and science and physics at the most elementary level. Such technology was beyond the scope of their brightest minds, Alex included, so I would do as soldiers did, and take advantage of my environment. I made sure Alex was still near me, placed a hand on her, and that seemed to relax her momentarily. I moved nearer to her in the darkness, touching incidentally against that persistent, growing heat.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” Roulette spoke words as sweet and honeyed as the candied apples beyond, her purr reminiscent of a big cat, a lion ready to pounce, and not just through a fiery ring. “We’re here tonight… for entertainment!”

Applause. Wolf-whistles. The same trite, incomprehensible response as the fights, only this time, they were cheering for their purchases, cheering because they could take ownership and call something _theirs_.

Imbeciles.

Miscreants.

They leave their world to fester like an open sore; they hack away at Her raw materials like she produces inexhaustible resources for harvest. _Despicable._ The humans in that tent, on the entire planet, were absolutely despicable to me that night. I could have—I could have stopped this whole affair, I had my very own weapon, hidden at the base of a mountain in the California desert.

_Myriad._

I could stop the people in this tent, people like Max Lord and Roulette and my Ecological Genetics professor who argued and debated with outdated premises—incorrect and simplified and bolstered only by his egoism and status as tenured faculty. I could do away with people like Blake DeLaurier who deserved more than broken fingers, and I could finally get Jeremiah to clock in on time. Cat wouldn’t have to worry about further hits on her life, the bullies would stop coming for Carter, and M’gann would be free of Roulette’s grasp. I could… I could make them help me find Kara.

I could make Alex tell me where Kara was. I could make Alex want me—

“Why do you have a gun?” I asked the darkness.

“You haven’t told me what you’re doing here,” Alex returned. “Are you in the fights?”

“What do you know of it?”

“That Veronica Sinclair is stirring up a lot of alien hostility.”

“Alien hostility!?” I repeated, aghast at her presumption. “She’s forcing us to cage fight like animals.”

“And they’re doing their best to win. What’s in it for you?”

“The majority of the fighters are being blackmailed,” I hissed, incensed by her suggestion. Every little thing around me was suddenly foul, bothersome (I should have known then, thinking back on all that heat, that something was dreadfully wrong). “And it still doesn’t answer the question as to why you have a pistol in your ankle holster. Why all of you do. Not to mention that wire curled over the back of your ear.”

“That doesn’t have anything to do with—”

“Would you still whimper, if I kissed you there?” I asked. I don’t know why I asked, why thoughts of our previous romantic relationship had bypassed all of the drama of the auctions playing out before me. I thought of coffee, of RPMs in a centrifuge. I thought of Alex gushing around my fingers as I pushed her to orgasm on top of her kitchen island. “I recall you liked it the last time, though I don’t know if your head chef would appreciate the interruption. But maybe you like lying flat on your back, begging for me to eat you out on a table.”

“Astra…” Alex muttered lowly. She placed her hand on my forearm and it felt like a hot poker.

“Don’t touch me!”

“We need to talk,” Alex insisted. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, but… it’s too dark here. There’s… there’s too many—”

“I’m not here for you,” I said, shaking my head, fighting the heat. There was a reason I was here… a reason why I stayed to… to… to take photos. Right. With Cat’s cell phone, buried deep in my white pants pocket. I pulled it out and fiddled with the settings, struggling with that overwhelming sense of anger, or distress, or Rao-blasted _heat_. “I’m waiting until this horror show is over so I can gather my evidence,” I muttered. “And then, I’m putting a bullet through Roulette’s temple.”

“Astra!” Alex hissed, then turned away, but I could hear her mumbling into her earpiece over Roulette’s call for the opening bid. “…not engage with her, sir. She’s… there’s something off, so hold until I can get something out of her. Danvers, over.”

“I suppose that’s less embarrassing for you, now,” I said grimly watching the first alien trudge into the center as Roulette struck across its hindquarter. It was a lame inhabitant from Bolovax, who might do little more than limp along and mumble _yes_ or _no_ when hit hard enough. Hands soared and bids were flying, the auctioneer’s lips flapping at rapid pace, so quick he spit as he fielded bids from the crowd. I swore; then, I thought of Alura, of her searing betrayal but she wasn’t hear for me to confront. Alex was.

“I believe flunking out of graduate school to become a soldier is a sight more noble than peddling canapés as some caterer’s plowhorse.”

“You work in food service,” Alex bit back. “You’re hardly one to talk.”

“You think you know what life is like in the field, little human?” I said. “You’d do better sticking to what you know. Running. Running like a fucking coward.”

“I’m not a coward,” Alex protested. “And you… you’re not innocent in all this. You’re hiding who you are, too. I had a reason to run. But you’re just lying.”

“You see why I do?” I asked her, my hand gravitating toward the Bolovaxian taking strike after strike against its back. “Or else I’d be beaten and auctioned off like this. Lord already has his sights set on me as some sexual conquest, I couldn’t stomach humans bidding on me like some prized livestock—”

“…sexual… sexual conquest?”

“That’s not allowed to bother you. I’m fairly certain that’s how this works.”

“I’m fairly certain you wouldn’t actually take him up on the offer.”

“Would it bother you if I did? If I let him take me behind one of these curtains? And you’d know it, too. You’d be in here working, and he’d be doing what you were never brave enough to finish—”

“Why would you even—you’re not actually considering it, are you?”

“He’s the ring master of this circus,” I said. “Getting into his good graces is simple strategy.”

“You’re an intergalactically-renowned general.” Her hand, back on my forearm, hot and burning and possessive in a way that shifted the heat overtaking my body lower, dangerously lower. “Sleeping with the enemy to gain the upper hand is beneath you.”

“Well, it wasn’t beneath you, was it?” I snapped.

I couldn’t see her face in the darkness, but the dig had the desired effect. She didn’t speak again. I was thankful for her silence, so I refocused on the biddings even though I still felt her at my side. I snapped photos on Cat’s phone when I could; moved discreetly; took note of how many soldiers-turned-caterers milled about the outskirts of the tent, replenishing drinks and scoping out potential escape routes. Guns, one, two, three… tucked in ankle holsters. The heat that had been bothering me since Alex interrupted my little chat with Lord crept up my spine and took hold at the base of my skull, seemed to spread like magma tendrils round my head, along my cheeks. I must’ve looked insane, face twitching, squirming like some new recruit, like I hadn’t held impeccable posture for years. My ears burned. The skin on my face felt tight. I kept hearing the prices soar, watching as Roulette snapped that whip when each new alien was led across the ring in chains.

“Stand down, General.”

If she hadn’t been trying to tell me what to do, I would have found such a statement surprisingly titillating. But it was Alex trying to stop me; Alex, again, at my back, one hand on my shoulder, my silent tail for the half hour since I’d dismissed her and taken my time with the photos.

“Astra, I don’t know what he’s done to you, but this is not the time. There are civilians here.”

“No one here is innocent,” I growled, wiping at my brow because I was—sweating? Alex told me later that my eyes gleamed red in the darkness, my uncontrolled laser vision giving me away. “It’s all of you simpering, insignificant humans, thinking you can tell us what to—”

“I’m not telling you what to do, I’m telling you that this is _bigger_ than you.”

“Is your catering company launching some _petit four_ attack I should take into consideration before eliminating the woman who is blackmailing my best friend?”

“Let me talk to you,” Alex begged, her expression drawn tight and tense at the edge of the spotlight. “You have your… evidence, or whatever, just… _please_.”

“Fine,” I said, though there was nothing _fine_ about us leaving the crowd. I had every intention of knocking Alex unconscious and stealing her gun, then making off to do my worst with Roulette and Max. I hadn’t thought of Cat or M’gann outside of the abstract since I entered the tent.

Something was wrong, and I didn’t know it. Alex did. So many unknowns for her, but she recognized I was not—I was not myself, and thus, she forgave me for the events that followed. (It was less easy for me to forgive myself).

“Get out!” I shouted. Two women were washing their hands in Max’s lavishly decorated restroom when I stormed in with Alex.

“Excuse me, you can’t just—”

“I wasn’t asking.”

I grabbed one lady by the arm and hauled her along, soap suds dripping on her dress as she hollered. Pearls round her neck. French manicure. Crimson detail on her mask. I remembered her. She’d paid two-hundred and twenty thousand dollars for a Starhaven _child_. I gripped her tight enough to snap her wrist and… and I think I might have. I can’t rightly remember. The other woman followed behind in a fearful rush, which saved me a bit of trouble. Alex stood aghast while I darted to each stall and kicked doors open to see if anyone dared linger after I’d ordered them out. I ripped one metallic barrier from its actual hinges before she finally got my attention.

“Astra, what the hell is going on with you?”

“What are you doing here?!” I shouted, loud enough that the sound rattled inside of my head.

My eyes heated to unbearable degrees and I shot the handle with a beam of laser light, melting it and then quickly fusing the mass of metallic slop closed with my cooling breath. I shoved the settee in the powder room against the door and turned, furious, wild, my face flushed and my chest heaving. I looked as enraged as Roulette supposed all aliens were, staring back at myself in the mirror. The tailored white suit was tugged askew, cut low, no shirt beneath per the orders of the stylist. The pants, tight and sleek, wrapped round my thighs to show off muscular legs. The heels, taller than I’d ever worn, spikes better used for stabbing someone in the neck than walking upon. And then that stupid hat, cocked to one side of my head, completing an ensemble that made me look absolutely mad. I contrasted Alex fairly well though, in all her black and white accents.

“You said you got another job,” I pointed angrily at her.

I stalked closer, and she took a step back.

“So what is it, Alex? Using your research to test new appetizers? Why the hell are you here?”

“Astra.”

Sharp, quick, her hands propped at her right hip as if—as if she would draw a weapon against me?

I cackled. Truly, I _cackled_ at the notion, wondering if she had forgotten just who I was.

Perhaps I needed to remind her.

I sped to her front as her hands gripped some contraption at her waist, but my fingers moved round her throat in an instant.

“Ast—!”

“Don’t lie to me, Alex,” I told her. “Don’t… don’t you _dare_ lie to me.”

She struggled, both hands curling over my forearm, her cheeks bulging, her toes, stretching for purchase against the floor, hoping to bear some of the weight that I had taken up with one hand alone.

“Re—” she gasped, flailed, batted uselessly against my strength. I didn’t release her, but my grip loosened and I lowered her a millimeter or so back to the ground, just to bring a bit more color back to her blue face.

“Re…recon—recon!” she confessed, so I dropped her as a reward for her honesty.

Her own hands flew to her throat as she doubled over, gasping for air, shuffling away from me as I stared at her beneath the harsh brightness of the bathroom. The marble tiles reflected the gleaming light from the fixtures above, overwhelmingly bright, when we’d both grown so accustomed to the darkness of the tent. I saw her clearly, for the first time since I’d had my suspicions about her, a little server girl, hustling along at her commander’s order, taking napkins to a back room for… for something I didn’t know or care very much about. I stalked closer and she staggered back against the wall, wincing as I ripped the mask from her face.

Fullness to her cheeks. Color. Muscles, Rao, had her lines grown trim and strong during our separation. I looked through her clothing at the etched lines of her abdomen and don’t remember caring about the violation, because Alex looked… utterly delectable.

There wasn’t a trace of the customary bags I had seen haunting her eyes almost half a year ago. Even after my assault, she held her ground, her center of gravity shifted, as if she had undergone some sort of physical training to withstand any forces advancing against her. Rose blush streaked her cheeks from the struggle, and her hair cut sharply at her chin; beneath her clothing, I noted a new scar near her shoulder, and a chemical burn at her wrist. But despite all those nicks, she carried herself differently, regally, as if she’d finally settled into a posture and a gait she was always meant to inhabit. Her chest heaved against the straining buttons of her shirt, so my focus shifted down to the fabric pulled tight over her chest.

She didn’t just look beautiful—she was _ravishing_ , and I had never wanted anyone more. I reached for the center of my jacket’s lapels and undid the clasp, exposing my torso, relishing the way her breathing hitched and her cheeks flushed impossibly rosier.

Fingers migrated toward her earpiece, and I heard her speak with a surety that could only follow from months of training.

“Stand down,” she said. “Hostile willing… willing to negotiate.”

“Negotiating,” I said, biting my lower lip at the remark. “I like that.” It wasn’t confidence, but stubbornness, perhaps a touch of recklessness at the report, one that was an utter lie considering I had literally just choked her. I smirked and stalked closer, purring out my incredulous inquiry. “Is that what I am?” I reached for that ridiculous skinny tie, pulled her towards me and grabbed more fabric, hand over hand, until my fingers had walked the length of the material and tangled against the knot at the hollow of her throat. Her lips were only an inch away from mine. “… hostile?”

“Astra, you… you’ve been…” she glanced worriedly at the space between us, troubled stare flickering from my lips to my eyes, to whatever deeply-seated disturbance rested there.

That wouldn’t do.

“Your pupils are shot, there’s—there’s something wrong with you, something wrong with—oh, _Christ_.”

I’d released my grip on her tie and had guided her hand up and over my bare breast, winking in acknowledgement of her ear piece. I dived in and sucked against her neck on the opposite side of her head, right where red marks from my earlier choke hold had left her skin pink and swollen.

“There’s something wrong with _all_ of this,” I purred back at her, placing a kiss to the tip of her nose, then gently, gently as I could manage, I pressed my mouth against the furrowed creases of her forehead. Her thumb brushed my nipple and I hissed, urging her to massage me harder, to use her other hand, to finally repay me for that delicious fucking I’d given her at Thanksgiving.

“Astra…”

Oh, how I’d missed that voice. “Do not fret so, Alex,” I hummed against her, letting one hand slide down her back to her ass. I grabbed her and pulled her against me, taking exactly what I’d wanted to take for months and months. I ground against her but it wasn’t enough; it would never be enough in these stupid white fashion trousers. Why the hell had I ever listened to Cat about fashion, anyway? Robes on Krypton were easier to shuck, but then again, heat like this never existed on my planet. _Alex_ never existed, I could never have anticipated her coming—oh, Alex coming, coming around me, because of me, crying out _for me_ —I ground down harder despite the barrier of the garments and felt the heat and wetness surge tenfold. She choked on a groan so I kissed her throat, kneaded her ass, showed her how desperately I craved her touch.

“I’m going to fix this,” I promised her, rocking and grinding, forcing our bodies together. “I will fix it all.”

“No,” she gasped. “No, don’t—”

“Don’t?” I paused, stared at her hooded eyelids, at the… the tears collecting at the creases. I cupped her cheeks and pressed kisses there, didn’t even protest when she released my breast and moved her hands beneath my jacket to pull me closer, to just… to _hug_ me. “Don’t what, Alex?” I asked, nosing into her neck, biting down gently like she was _mine_ , like we were just college students and baristas again, like the humans weren’t selling souls for profit two rooms away from us.

“I remember, you know,” I told her, consumed by her, by what I’d had with her, only that one time. Her hands on my back and I remember how she dug in, how she tried to scratch my shoulder blades but couldn’t, not with my impenetrable skin. Her hands on my back and I remember how she would hold me at every level: one hand tangled in my curls and the other low on my spine, fitting our centers together. I moved to the ear without the earpiece, for I wanted none of them to know of our secret, our special secret, mine and Alexandra’s.

“I remember every time you touched me, and how you made me feel. I remember how… how _hot_ I felt, taking you—” my leg shifted to knock her feet wider, to wedge itself between her legs and nestle against her core so I could move one of her thighs up over my hip. I lifted her and she was back against the wall clawing at my shoulders once again, though I was so far gone I barely noticed the silent, unshed tears in her eyes.

“I remember being _inside_ you.” I licked the place I’d bitten but she didn’t cry out, or whimper, just sucked in a fortifying breath and withstood my assault. “—fucking you so hard on that table, when you still wanted me. When things were simpler.”

“Astra, stop.”

Her hands stopped scrabbling against my back, and her voice was steadier than it had any right to be. Her spine went rigid, but her skin was so warm, so supple, so deliciously tan beneath the collar of her shirt. A splotch of makeup had rubbed off near the collar, peachy, staining the threads there. I pushed the fabric back and licked the tendon that strained against her neck, feeling the _oof!_ she released when she fell back to the floor. She relaxed so slightly I almost didn’t feel it. But it was there, buried under months of self-denial; she _wanted_ to give into me, wanted me to take her again. Who cared why she was there in the first place when we were alone then, together? And this time, she couldn’t run away when I had finished with her, when I had taken what I wanted and could force her to answer me.

_Where was Kara, Alex?_

_Have you told her what you did to me, to us?_

_Do you still think you were in the right, you manipulative bitch?_

_Would you do it again, knowing I loved you, knowing you would wreck me?_

_Do you know, human, who you’ve crossed?_

_Do you know that I could end you with a single strike?_

I wondered how she felt now with the months and miles of separation between us. Something about my heated state made me know, instinctively, that if I asked her then, she would have to tell me the truth. Best to unsettle her, and then go in for the kill.

“Do you ever think of me when… when you touch yourself?” I asked her, dragging my thigh between her legs, taking liberties as if we hadn’t been separated for _months_. All my questions I asked soft and rumbling, avoiding speaking directly into the communication device at her ear. I needed these private answers, these moments where I could force the truths I wanted from her. That was my knowledge alone, and I didn’t want her sharing it with anyone else.

I grabbed her wrists and shoved them over her head as I inhaled her: the new scent lay beneath the remnants of mass-produced coffee and motorcycle gasoline and that sour laboratory smell I had always associated with her.

It sizzled, familiar and reassuring as battle.

_Gun powder_.

And if Alex had been difficult to resist before, what was I to do with this new warrior? This poise and this defiance, this unfaltering courage in the face of adversity? She’d taken up one of my favored hobbies. She’d stood there and faced me after months of absence. She had tried to protect me from Max, in spite of our falling out.

I convinced myself she loved me.

Still.

I convinced myself that she had loved me long ago, even though she never said it.

I convinced myself of that untruthful fact, and so, I tried to take her release. She loved me, and I believed I deserved it (it pains me, now, to know I scared her so much. She won’t let me apologize any more, but… but do you know what I nearly did to her? What I wanted to do—even subconsciously—that I ever had those thoughts… forgive me, this part is difficult).

I was able to hold both her wrists with only one hand, and so I let my other drift down along her arm, along the cotton fabric that stretched over newly toned triceps. “What have you been up to, my darling girl?”

“Astra, I said stop—”

“Tell me you think of me, I know you must,” I said, hovering just over her lips. I didn’t kiss her lips again, content instead to feel, to take her energy and add to the coals that seemed to have replaced my bones. My grip on her hands tightened and she gasped, arching into my body, though I could tell how furiously she was fighting her impulses.

“Please, Astra… don’t make me call them.”

“Who are they?”

“My… they’re coworkers.”

“I said don’t _lie_ , Alexandra!” I shoved one hand through a wall in anger and bit down on her neck again; that time I tasted iron, the slightest hint of blood on my tongue. She cried out and her hips juttered against my own, so I sighed and moved against her, allowing the hand covered in dust from sheet rock to ruck up her shirt and grope the perfect expanse of her toned abdomen.

“Code black,” she twisted her head to the side and raised her voice. “Code—women’s restroom, western corridor, code bl—black—”

“No!” I said, yanking the earpiece from her head. I threw it toward the ground and crushed it with the stupid heel Cat had put me in, and, in doing so, broke the damn shoe.

“Fuck it,” I muttered, dropping her wrists and finally sealing my lips against her own. That hat flew to the ground and my jacket fell open, my breasts dragging against the warm cotton of her shirt, friction tugging precisely where I wanted it.

She didn’t kiss me back, using the opportunity instead to grab me by the lapels of my suit and push, fruitlessly, away from me. She tried to cover me, but I wanted her… I _wanted_ her, she was _mine_ , and it seemed perfectly sensible at the time for me to have her despite her protests.

“Astra, Astra stop!”

I blinked.

Then I blinked again.

Alex—Alex was _here_ , Alex was here and telling me to… to stop?

I pulled away, but only just, fires biting at my fingertips as coolness wrapped round my mind, only to be ignited once again. Fire returned, and those flaming fingertips dug into Alex’s shirt and ripped directly through the fabric. I gasped as I heard the material tear and tried to take a step back. Back, back toward the mirror. Back toward the mirror in my white suit, with my sad face—wait, sad? Sad because… because I was crying, and I hadn’t realized.

“You want me to stop?” I nodded, but I didn’t release her because I wanted her, but she wanted me to stop, but I… I couldn’t stop, I could feel myself, if the heat came back, I wouldn’t stop…

“This isn’t… this isn’t _you_ , okay?” Alex took a deep breath through her nose, eyes blown wide in—in fear?

“What are you talking about?” I snapped, holding her at arm’s length.

“You would never—if I asked you to stop, you would stop, wouldn’t you?”

Heat. Heat back in my eyes. Red, Alex told me later. I’d looked at her with lasers in my pupils, and she’d talked me down like I had been perfectly sane.

(She’s the bravest woman I know, if you hadn’t caught onto that yet).

“Alex,” I tutted, hands tracing up her ribcage and cupping her through the material of her sports bra. “Alex, I want—”

“Astra,” she said softly, her fingers winding round my wrists and stalling my hands. “You would stop, I know you would.”

“It’s so—it’s so hot, Alex. Everything is—”

“Hot as in…” Alex trailed off, then moved her fingers carefully toward my brow. Her touch, so blissfully cool, just at my temple, the bridge of my nose, running along that vein that would emerge whenever I felt cross or distressed. “Astra, you’re… you’re burning up.”

“What is… Alex?” I asked her, unable to… unable to remember much aside from heat, aside from anger, anger at those humans, at what they’d done to us. Alex was touching me and I wanted—I wanted to… to…

I wanted to bend the manipulative human bitch over that counter and shove her head down under a running faucet until she was a sputtering, choking mess. I wanted to rip that belt off and bundle her pants around her knees until she was bare and helpless before me, until she was struggling, until I took back the power she stole from me. I wanted it back, and I wanted to grab and strike and bite every inch of Alex, every portion of the woman who dared keep Kara from me, who wouldn’t love me back after everything we’d been through.

I felt all of this through that heat, and I couldn’t… there was no way to stop it.

I needed to get as far away from Alex as I could, before she withdrew her cool fingers, that momentary clarity… I had to leave before I did something I knew I was going to regret.

“That drink,” Alex said, hands moving toward my neck, still cool, still blessedly clear. “I knew he’d done something to it.”

“He can’t do… I’m invincible,” I said, biting my tongue the instant the words left my mouth. It was not that long ago that I awoke to a sterile room in a white paper gown, powerless and alone, all because of Maxwell Lord. And I felt miles away from invincible, susceptible instead to revenge, to the unflagging urge that told me flip Alex around and bury my fingers inside of her, no matter if she wanted it or not.

I twitched, wondering if this was Maxwell at his worst.

He deserved my second bullet.

“Alex,” I said again, feeling her name stir in my chest as it had before, prompting me to—to do terrible things. I couldn’t stop myself from kissing her exposed skin, from running my hands under her shirt, and then over her shoulders. My finger unfastened her belt, even as I knew, _I knew_ , something was controlling me beyond my common sense. I ached for her. The jerking release of the button, the _zip_ from her fly, the warmth, waiting for my hand…“You should leave before… before I…”

“I don’t want to leave you like this,” she protested, pulling me against her forehead by the back of my neck. “You’re not… you’re not stable right now.”

“Alexandra, I won’t be able to control myself.” I pressed kisses against her neck, over the buttons of her shirt. I found myself falling to my knees, unable to leave her. I had to—I couldn’t keep touching her, I would never, not to Alex—refocus, refocus the anger, refocus—oh, her hips, her thighs, covered in utilitarian black underwear, the cut of the garment arching over the whitest, smoothest, most perfect skin. A strap bisecting the meat of her thigh beneath those black trousers, a combat knife and sheath, so brave, so powerful, so wet for me… I could smell her through her undergarments, I could… I could taste…

“Astra,” she said, tilting my chin up to look at her. “You stopped before, when I asked you to.”

I nodded weakly, pressing a kiss against her palm. My hands gripped the undone buckle of her belt. It had slipped down round her knees and I knew what I wanted—no, what I deserved—it was so close to me.

“Alex, I can’t—”

I heard the first bash against the bathroom wall and jolted my head toward the side to look through the barrier. Two servers, one woman, the same from earlier with the short hair, and then another, a large man still in his mask, shoving against the locked door.

“Astra, come with us,” Alex pleaded, tears in her eyes. “Let me help you.”

A flashback, to that torturous moment on her apartment doorstep, tears in her eyes then, anger, her face in my hand, _let me help you_ on my own tongue, and now, again, something else was shattering what remained between us.

“No,” I shook my head, but couldn’t seem to leave the floor. “I have to—” I took a deep breath, because I knew they were coming, and the closer they got, the sooner Alex would leave me. “I need to get away from you before I—”

Another jolt, and I heard the door splinter. I pressed another kiss to Alex’s thigh and rested my forehead against her hipbone, thoughts of scooping her up and flying her away where she could never escape still present, still _there_ , but vulgar and vile and just as terrible as the auctions earlier that night had been. Everything seemed so terrible… so _disgusting_ , and I couldn’t even stick around Alex long enough to question her about the soldiers-slash-catering organization because I was seconds away from raping her.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, yanking the gun from her ankle and twisting away from her, exerting a strength of will I didn’t even know I possessed.

“Astra!”

The door wasn’t an option. Lucky for me, I was Kryptonian, and on this planet, walls weren’t much of an obstacle. Alex fumbled with her pants and belt as I looked over my shoulder one last time, buttoning my jacket lapels and then clutching the stock so hard I’m surprised I didn’t crush the piece in my palm.

“Don’t come after me,” I told her, flinching as the door of the bathroom finally gave under the efforts of the woman who I would soon learn was one Agent Susan Vasquez. “…or I won’t be able to stop what I’ll do to you.”

“Astra, no—Astra, stop!”

I flew through the wall and took half the bathroom with me, bursting through the other side in a cloud of debris, geysering pipes, and blink fury. I shot Alex’s gun once in the air and the _pop_ resounded, scattering circus-goers to the left and right, prompting the few servers in my vicinity to turn their attentions toward me and to shift out of their recon mode into active alert. Security converged. I resisted. It took some sweeping jabs and two carefully placed bullets, one to the kneecap, one to the junction of ball-socket and shoulder, but the guards were not my targets; in my savagery, in my haze, I realize gunning down the orchestrators was not my best move. I had super speed, laser vision, and yet I was relying on puny human bullets to do the job for me?

Perhaps I found comfort in the familiar.

I had been a sniper in my earliest years in the Kryptonian Guard. I found satisfaction in extinguishing the life’s light of a criminal, cleanly cutting off any more breath. Especially those who deserved it.

Roulette. Far wall, being ushered into the back hallways. I sped through and fought against stampeding crowds, heedless of the melee around me. Aliens used the panic to their advantage, using their chains to swing as weapons, knocking their guards to the ground and roaring in their faces. The rampage continued despite the zaps and pops of Max and Roulette’s anti-alien weaponry; at this point, we’d been hurt so much that we were running on adrenaline, fueled by spite, by livid passion. Perhaps we were animals, that night. Animals on the brink of starvation, wounded, battered, ready to rise up against any who would cage us.

The riot turned bloody. Screeches, broken limbs, worse than the warehouse fire, enough to ensure that Roulette and Maxwell’s enterprise would never see participation again, assuming everyone at the party made it out alive.

Where was Cat?

M’gann?

Alex?

I didn’t care.

Roulette was escaping, but not for long. My vision burst bright, and I set the golden tent at center aflame, the curtains blazing, smoke billowing high and dark into the heights of Max’s atrium. Roulette, behind the wall, loading a gun with glowing bullets, one pink, one neon purple, one pulsing sickly, pale lime. I rushed forward and burst through another wall, collapsing half of a hallway and blocking out the screams from the crowds behind me. I left the aliens to their mutiny and resolved to do my part.

“Veronica!” I shouted, stalking forward as bullets rained against me, shredded my suit, _pinged_ off my skin like bottlecaps against brick. “Veronica Sinclair, step forward to receive your judgment.”

_Astra In-Ze, we, the High Council of Krypton, strip you of your titles: Brigadier General and Leader of the Soldiers of the Bastion Range, Arclominian of the First Order, First daughter of the House of Ze and Defensive Consul to the Kryptonian Legion. Step forward to receive your judgment._

I’d followed Roulette into the bowels of Max’s building, and had somehow wandered into the service kitchen. I shoved two guards over tables laden with food in silver chafers, platters of silver with small apple slices and popcorn clusters; kernels scattered, and one man screamed when hot, runny caramel splashed across his face. One man’s sleeve caught fire from a Sterno flame. Another bullet landed against my shoulder, striking deeper and making me stagger backward. Looking down, I saw a flash of purple. I raised Alex’s gun and it blasted, struck true, caught Veronica’s first burly guard in the neck and sprayed her with a shower of blood. He fell slowly and I took aim again, following the shot with a blast from my eyes; I singed her twisted updo while the bullet hit home in her abdomen, a gut shot, that left her collapsing into the open arms of a guard as he dragged her out the back of the kitchen. I emptied the clip and leapt over counters and rolling service trays, staggering after her.

“Astra!!!”

Alex pointed a gun at me, but it didn’t look like any human gun I’d ever seen. I instantly felt queasy when she raised it in my direction.

“Astra, stop—it’s chaos out there.”

“If she escapes because of you,” I dry heaved and scrambled forward, pulling myself by my arms along the countertops. “I swear to Rao, Alexandra—”

“Alpha team, go! Go! Go!”

The wait staff poured into the room with guns drawn, so I threw Alex’s empty pistol to the side and sped forward with my eyes burning, my hands extended, prepared to tear the humans limb from fragile limb.

“Danvers, take the shot!”

She did.

And she didn’t miss.

Roulette escaped, I destroyed half of Max Lord’s building, and Alex Danvers shot me in the chest with a Kryptonite bullet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im really kinda nervous about how intense that was. open to criticism or if i need to tweak or include more tws, cause i dont have a beta to tell me when ive gone too far... red!K is no effing joke yall
> 
> update schedule: imma bout to go into a 3-week summer intensive thing for my job working weekends and stuff. i'm going to try to get at least the next "after the fall-out" chapter up before that starts next sunday, but if i don't, just wanted to give you a forewarning i probs wont be able to update til closer toward the end of june :'(((
> 
> idk if it matters, but i also made a tumblr so it'll update in the GD tag whenever i post stuff:
> 
> anonymississippi.tumblr.com if you're interested, but it'll probs just be my fic stuff.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw; shooting, gore, and death of a child

“ _You… return… with me?_ ”

The way I spoke must’ve seemed so inexpert to her. I contorted my tongue around syllables that those inhabitants of Streld formed with ease; it was quite laughable that I (who had mastered no less than seven other languages at that point in my career) was having such difficulty with it.

But Rodisia’s youth rendered her compassionate and forgiving despite her apparent lack of what I’d considered a happy childhood. She belonged to a warrior culture, a desert culture, a culture overrun with strife and with want, and yet within that, small triumphs were more than common. It was nothing like Kara’s childhood: safe, rigorous and strict on occasion, protected, but loved—oh, how Kara was loved! By her mother, and by myself, though… though I once supposed I would not love another little girl as I loved Kara.

_Not until Rodi mine, my ruddy Rodi girl._

Many have questioned why I prefer full names. Why I insisted upon Consuela in the beginning of her work at the coffee shop, though I knew she was only ever addressed as Connie; why 'Alexandra' will never be Alex, though I have slipped so many times, referring to her as my Brave One. That took time, though. And really, how could I not learn from such mistakes? In every instance that I loved someone enough to name them, to call them my own--my Captain and my Rodi and my Little One--they all died.

Until Kara, thankfully, blessedly, Kara. 

Can anyone truly wonder why I did everything in my power to save my planet? To save its _children_?

I had already lost a girl of my own.

Rodisia of Streld was tough and red like her sands, golden like Rao’s light, and her smile overran the rivers of tears her people had cried upon invasion. Three months into a mission and I had fallen so in love with the girl that I had no choice but to take her as my own; to love her as Rodisia deserved loving; to be a mother to an orphan with melodic flames in her voice and defiance in her eyes.

I’d taken her behind our shelter to ask, to see if she would be amenable to such a suggestion. It took pointing at the ship and sketching glyphs in the sand but she nodded, she laughed, she clapped her hands together and threw herself into my arms. I released her small, wiry body, but she clung to my neck all the harder. I knelt, and spoke in half-Kryptonian phrases, partial words from Streld, _leave_ , _new_ , _home_ , _love_ , words and words and promises in the sand. I thought of how she would look in the Academy’s robes, her tan skin a perfect contrast to the white linen of Instruction, her gorgeous tattoos sadly covered by the sleeves.

I fantasized often while on her planet, while off-duty in the endless canyon. I made mental lists of places I would take her, of landmarks we would visit on Krypton, and of planets we would explore for leisure. I told myself that on my periods of leave in future I would take her and Kara both to Argo City’s Bottomless Natatorium, where coral pools grew and underwater caves branched out in networks beneath the eastern sector and reached, tree-like and expansive, all the way to the Borentine Sea.

I vowed to show her wells of water deeper and more expansive than she had ever seen. Rains were uncommon, living in this blood-tinted desert, and yet Rodisia was fascinated by anything wet. We would splash and play and I imagined I would teach her to dive, she and Kara would race, Alura would fret behind us as they wrestled each other below the surface. There, in the bathing costumes of Krypton, she would be able to show off her storied tatoos, the moving paintings on her arms that would always mark her as a Strelder.

A Strelder, but _mine._

Those marks were part of her home, and I would never take them from her, or cover any part of her in which she took pride. But watching how they moved, how they transfigured themselves to account for moods, for camouflage, for all sorts of landmark life events… it seemed mystical in ways our clerics would revere. When I asked her to return with me—to be my _daughter_ —the white marks on her shoulders shimmered silver with her joy, and her dimples deepened like little tawny valleys in her face.

She immediately dragged me to my quarters and asked all sorts of questions about Krypton. I gave her the armband Alura had mended on my last trip home—the one with the House of Ze’s crest embossed in golden lettering—and she waited patiently as I fixed it to her bicep. She ran her fingers over the fabric and marveled at the gift. It was close to human’s velveteen, smooth, heavier than any fabric she’d ever felt. She looked at me with tears in her eyes, kissed my cheek, and said, _thank you._

_Thank you, erieh._

I had known going into the military that having my own child through the Codex would be impossible. Soldiers were not granted access to the Codex for fear they would die in battle; for how could a Kryptonian child be raised properly without both mother and father?

And so it went that hundreds of thousands of Kryptonians did not reproduce during their enlistments, and the few who had qualms about such notions but still desired to serve, would place their names into an unlikely adoption lottery for those Kryptonian children orphaned by accident. Even then, there was no guarantee that one might be selected to raise a child. And further stipulations were placed upon the family itself: if one spouse was in the military, what was the occupation of the other? Would there be time for social, emotional, and intellectual nourishment? Did both parents’ personalities complement one another? Had the marriage been arranged or was it fated by Rao’s dance? What type of schooling did they have? If the applicants were low-born, could a high-performing child still be placed in their home, or would the discrepancies in expectations at the Academy be too disparate to overcome?

The questions and regulations were endless, but I had heard in certain very special cases, of councilors rescuing humanoid refugees and introducing them into the adoption lottery. And perhaps my pride got the better of me (for it had done so on many occasions), but I was the Council’s embattled starlet, their celebrity colonel. I was respected by the ones who found meaning in hero worship and feared by the ones who put stock in power. They would make allotments for me if I asked, if I _mandated_ , and I had divined that Rodisia was mine by Roa’s providence.

Alura would be shocked, at first, and Non—well, I cared very little for his reaction. Perhaps he would take kindly to it, even if she was not his by birth. And if he disdained her, it would be of little matter. She would have my House’s name; she would be _my_ family. On deployments, Rodisia could stay with Alura and Zor-El, could play with Kara and would then commit herself to instruction. She had already begun inscribing Kryptonian glyphs onto parchment pieces in her encampment since my arrival three months prior.

She was the brightest, hottest start in all the galaxies, and she would be my daughter.

 

* * *

 

 

I had made this proposition one week before the attack. I had been teaching her about my mission, about characteristics of soldiers in the field, things that our trained operatives did daily that an eight or nine year old might find intriguing. All of that knowledge, and yet, such lessons would cost her her life.

She knew that sparkles on the horizon were not to be investigated, as mesmerizing as they seemed. They oftentimes meant metallic reflections, light bouncing off of scopes and barrels and lasers. She knew that taking cover, that _getting down_ , was the only way to save herself.

And on that day, she saw the twinkle off the barrel of the gun, high and away on the dunes, and instead of ducking for cover, she flung herself at me.

The shots echoed against the walls of the sandy canyon. Her green eyes flashed like dragon’s scales, and her last breath was flaming protection.

“ _Erieh_ —ah!”

“Rodi…? Rodisia—Rodi no, _no!_ —get down! Get down, all of you, _now_!” I cried, rolling to the side and dragging her body along with me.

Blood burbled up her throat and she spat it onto my uniform, thick and hot as quicksand. It gushed from beneath her shirt and drenched my uniform, spurts surging where the bullet had shattered two of her delicate, baby-soft ribs. I didn’t feel her last creaking breath when she died (that was all she was afforded after a bullet meant for me, the leader of the relief mission). I was too concerned with pulling us both down below the rocks, around the pods, under some brush for cover. As I reached round her to yank her against me my fingers surely hit bone, surely hit internal caverns that should not have been exposed. But the bullet had been cruel, had been vicious against her unblemished child’s flesh.

Her light faded and I was childless again.

In an _instant_ _,_ just... that quick! I lost her.

But I had no time to mourn her, even as her blood covered me. There was a village to save, a counter attack, and after we fought the raiders off, I continued to work as if I hadn’t placed every hope for my future in her.

My Rodisia never cried in pain during my time on Streld. I’d only ever seen her shed her tears in joy; and that she was, joyful over the prospect of my taking her back to Krypton.

I loved her more than myself, and I lost her.

I never told Alura.

I never told Non.

I never… I never told anyone.

Every warrior of battle age—fifteen, I believe it was, men and women alike—chanted and hummed their burial rites to the four bodies we burned that night. Two architects had been working near the water, one woman and one man; and there had been a teenager who had leapt in front of three children crouched by the stream.

The teenager's body was the most grotesque. Four shots, two to the chest, one through the skull, and another at the hip. I have seen…so many things in battle, but in all my years of combat, little compared to his mutilated form. I still remember his eye, hanging from a socket. His teeth, rammed into the upper jaw of his skull. His breast, exploded from within, as if he had been hacked at and left open like carrion pickings.

Once we had driven the raiders away, I took Rodisia’s body back to the Kryptonian compound and cleaned her. I poured two days’ ration of water onto her chest, her legs, her elbows; I wiped grit from between her inquisitive fingers. They were short and dirty and skilled; she’d taken to writing Kryptonian glyphs in the sand, had practiced and practiced, until she’d succeeded in marking the earth with _Welcome to Streld, Friend Kryptonians_!

I touched the soft baby flesh behind her knee, that vulnerable patch of her that wasn’t as tan as her arms or her shins. I wiped the blood away from her ribs and I wiped again and I scrubbed the dried bits out of her fleshy armpits and the tender hollow of her throat. I toweled her down and I bathed her until eventually all the caked red was gone and she was clean, cleaner than any day I’d ever seen her.

No sand. Just Rodi. Dark, wavy hair and nerves of steel, and a habit of sliding on her _s_ sounds that I’d helped to correct since she began visiting me. Though I secretly adored when she made the slip.

_Assshtra._

_Rodisshhiah._

My darling, Rodi. My fearless little girl.

And then I held her, I rocked her, I sang to her, I told her how I would only be gone for a short while, that I often went on missions, but on Krypton, where I would take her, where her new home would be, she would have friends and a cousin and all the knowledge she could ask for. She would have me to love her and rock her and hold her when she feared the canyons and their echoes.

I kissed my little girl’s round, baby-puffed cheeks and never knew a sweeter taste.

I can’t remember how long, precisely, that I remained with her in the tent. I only remember the loss of her, the gaping hollow of her, and how she reminded me of other lost loves.

My mourning for Con-Tul had been contained.

But with Rodisia?

I _raged_.

I hurled my navigator’s kit against the side of my tent. I upended my cot and broke the mirror and threw every tool within reach into the side of my transport pod so that it thudded, dull and resounding, like an empty chest cavity. I ripped my sheets into strips to wrap her in, for it was the family’s job to prepare the body, and she had no other family. I punched my packing trunk so hard I dislocated a finger, and I wailed into the suits and battle fatigues. I bit down so hard on material in my pack I found fibers between my teeth days later. I tried and failed to suppress my moaning so I wouldn’t disturb the others, but I know they heard me.

I had never screamed so loudly, not even in Rozz, for I had only myself to lose in prison.

Not my _daughter_. Not this little life that was mine to cherish, and nurture, and protect.

I loved her.

I _loved_ her.

I smoothed her hair over her shoulders and closed her eyes before the rigidity could set. I pressed kisses against her cheeks and forehead and cried and cried until the high heat of the afternoon had overtaken the encampment. I never stopped talking to her, not the entire time I prepared her, or rocked her, or held her hand as she lay on my cot.

_We will go swimming,_ I promised her, playing with her clean, nimble fingers.

_I will teach you to dance_ , I vowed, pulling her legs together so she would be comfortable in sleep.

_You will have more food to eat than you even knew existed! Steamed torsin is my specialty, though your Aunt, her name is Alura, you will meet her soon—she is a much better cook than I._

_And you have a cousin! Her name is Kara, and she’s a year or two older than you, but she will love you, I know she will. She is clever and bright, but you, I fear, will lead her into mischief. And that is expected, for I did the same with my sister, you see? A curious mind like yours can’t be contained, nor should it!… and I know, danger can sometimes be exciting, my darling one, but do be wise, Rodi._

_You are much too precious to risk._

_On clear nights, I will take you to the top of the observatory. We’ll find your star, the star of Rodisia In-Ze, and one day, you and I both… we’ll soar across the galaxies until we close in, until that brightness beams back across your cheeks and you’re flushed by your own radiance, just as I’ve been since I met you._

“High Colonel.”

A second-in-command. Or perhaps a foot soldier. I remember every soul I ever worked with from Krypton, but on that day I remembered only how peacefully Rodisia slept.

“They’re completing the pyres. Their custom… the custom requires the bodies burn at sunset.”

“Yes,” I responded, and my voice didn’t crack. It didn’t even sound choked. For I had been speaking to her for so long, it felt like another part of the conversation. “I’ll have her ready, then.”

“Colonel,” the soldier said, and I vaguely remember concern. “Your hand…”

“Leave us,” I commanded, standing, turning, breathing. Breathing for the first time in three hours. Four hours. An afternoon? A day? Had the attack come at dawn? “I… I mean… leave me,” I amended. “I need to wrap her… body.”

“Do you need assistance, Colonel?”

“No, but thank you. Come for me once the procession begins.”

“Aye, mam’.”

 

* * *

 

 

I swaddled her in linens the Strelders had left outside my tent. I also used strips of sheets from my cot, material I had torn from one of my uniforms. And even when she was covered and I placed the last strip round her wavy hair and closed eyelids, I gathered her up in my arms one last time and cried in silence. There were no labored, hiccupping breaths. No vocal sobs. Just saltwater on my cheeks when I knew I would never take Rodisia to an ocean.

I remember one flap of my tent floating back. I remember the transport pod offered, and I remember shaking my head. I remember my hand throbbing as I cradled the bulk of her still, loaded weight in my arms.

It was perhaps a quarter mile to the pyres I saw near the stream, but I wouldn’t let anyone else take her, even as my arms shook in fatigued agony, as tear tracks became my own tattoos, as my soul cried out in anguish.

I laid her atop the brick and brush and watched as a priest anointed each body with oil and brought forth the mirrored holograms. Torches were lit from a central fire and then handed, one by one, to family members approaching the pyres. They handed one to me, and I nearly dropped it, wincing at the pain shooting up my nerves from the crunched remnants of the third knuckle on my left hand.

I grasped the torch with my other hand and saw Rodisia's face smiling down at me from the hologram above her pyre. I tried to remember how breathing worked.

That evening in the violet gloaming, I stood childless and grim at the funerals of the innocents; the Strelders of the canyon allowed me to place the flaming torch to her pyre, and hands found my shoulders as the flames sailed higher and the hologram disappeared. With those dirtied strips I had wrapped her up tightly, an embrace, a protection, even if it wasn’t my arms around her; but she was still bleeding through the burial linens as the fire took her.

Before I set the flames against the brush, I wrapped my armband around her tiny bicep, and whispered Rao’s rites over her. I bent to press my lips against her forehead and wished I had the privilege of brushing her tears away.

Another child, a boy, with tears on his fat cheeks and sand smudged on his chin, came and tugged at my elbow. He pointed at the burning pyre and blinked, his almond eyes sparkling with sadness.

“ _Rodisia trelsot Erieh? Astra destyrvin… destyrvin mort Rodi?”_

“I’m sorry, I…”

“Haivrey, no.”

A engineering elder came and dismissed the boy. He took his place at my side and we continued our solemn watch, torches licking against the night. Stars winked back at us with flagrant audacity, and I hated them.

How dare they continue shining without Rodisia to challenge them? How dare they continue burning when the only flame that mattered had been doused by cruelty? I ripped my eyes from the heavens for if I continued staring, I would begin cursing Rao. I had held onto mangled faith for the longest of times, but at that moment, I questioned everything, even the most sacred, elemental parts of me.

“What did he say, Plasko?” I asked the leader.

“He asked if Rodisia belonged to you.”

“I am no slaver,” I answered gravely. “Please, tell you children we are not like the raiders—”

“No, not as the raiders,” Plasko said. “ _Erieh_ in our language… I believe you call it… _Ieiu._ ”

Tears fell again while I watched her dissolve. Sizzled hair smells abhorrent, and I remember hers sparking, deteriorating, her forever-long waves charred to smoke.

“How do the Ieiu of Krypton mourn their children?”

“They do not,” I answered. “Our society is… our genetics, it… it is rare that a mother outlives her child.”

“But not unheard of?”

“No.”

“On Streld, our bodies return to the sand from which the waters churned. From which our forms were shaped. From which we broke, and from which we rose,” Plasko intoned. “As we pass, our passes return.”

“But she was not dirt, Plasko,” I said, daring to approach the fire, feeling my cheeks blister from her heat. “She burned hotter than eruptions. A little red star.”

_My_ little red star.

“Even stars meet their ends, General Astra.”

“I know that,” I told him then, years ago in the desert, still feeling the force of the bullet against her body and the gush of her blood on my chest.

 

* * *

 

 

The brighter they burned, the less time they had. There was such poetic justice to the concept.

And thus I have always known that stars were beautifully finite; for if Rodisia could not escape death, surely someone as pitiful and dull as I would not get by unscathed.

I just never imagined I would explode in the same way she did. With a final sob, a breath, and a bullet tearing through my heart.

 

* * *

 

 

Cell or hospital.

It was always one of the two.

Four times in a cell.

Seven in a hospital, though for three of those trips to the hospitals or field medical units, I was still conscious. And, technically, two of the trips to the holding cells I was conscious as well.

So if I applied what figures I could recall, _number of times I’ve woken in a strange place after a fight_ , I was operating with a 1:2 ratio of jail cell to hospital awakenings. Of course, opening my eyes would have been a wonderful start, but the pain in my chest was so intense I felt that if even my eyelash twitched I would feel it throb in my rib cage, right at the source of the unimaginable ache.

And as much as I wanted to move, I wanted to sleep even more. Which was damn near impossible, for my surroundings were ruthlessly bright. It was hot, and wherever I was wasn’t quiet, but instead, _humming._ The brightness felt like sunlight, looked like sunlight. There were multicolored spheres behind my lids, but they were loud in a way that sunlight wasn’t.

Synthetic.

The humming buzz of a generator, or an—oven, perhaps?—maybe even bulbs? I was more inclined to consider the likelihood of having been placed in an oven, since my last semi-conscious encounter had been with gun-wielding caterers, though where they would get such culinary power was rather beyond my logistical abilities at my first stirring after having been shot in the chest. I heard the clinical beeping of a heart monitor quicken as I came back to awareness, but I really didn’t want to open my eyes. I instead wanted to sleep forever, and go back to my early days on Streld, leaping over rocks in the canyon with Rodisia, adventuring out past the dunes and toward the oasis. I placed my hand beneath her soft child’s belly and held her, buoyant and determined, coaching her in the water… _kick fast, curious one, you are doing well!_

We didn’t get to go there that often, not after my scouts discovered the raider encampment on the north side of the jungle-like terrain near the small watering hole. We kept to the canyon and building etched in stone, the ancient screens, the trickling stream.  I held her hand as we walked barefoot in the canyon water, her feet paddling while silver guppies nibbled at our toes.

Two days before she was killed she asked me if she would ever properly learn to swim, and I had answered in the affirmative with the utmost confidence.

“Astra?”

Someone in the bright synthetic buzz was calling my name, but so was Rodisia.

I wasn’t ready to leave her behind, and besides… hadn’t I just taken a bullet for her?

 

* * *

 

 

I left Rodisia playing Marble Tokens atop the crudely fashioned board I’d put together in my tent the second time the buzzing brightness woke me. Breathing was significantly easier, though the throb still persisted, above my breast, near my sternum, deep and chilling like hypothermia on Yygdern IV. And yet the pain was juxtaposed with the blessed heat surrounding me, enveloping me. However, the platform on which I rested was far more rigid, utilitarian and uncomfortable.

There were so many contrasting sensations wreaking havoc on my senses. Was I to be healed? Hurt? Why the sunny, pleasant heat, but the strange heavy shackle on my wrist? Why the pressure in my chest?

What exactly was happening to my _body_?

It was all terribly confusing, and so I latched onto what little made sense. The heat reminded me of the deserts in Streld. Where I loved someone, and she loved me as well. It was easy to recall a memory distilled to its purest, truest form. So I held onto that. Found strength in it. Strength enough to shift, even though I felt like dying would be much easier.

I remember moving under the bright that time. My ankle, I guess. There was no voice calling my name, though. And when I opened my eyes, I was nearly blinded. So I turned to the side and winced, squinted, thought about bringing my hand to my brow to shield myself from the sunlight, but I was shackled to the side of the… the capsule.

Beyond the brightness of the strange, coffin-like pod I was caged in, I saw darkness. The synthetic hum of the place was overwhelming, but I could just make out striding people with clipped paces; militaristic, duty-driven, as if they were all synchronized to task.

I could not see the sky.

I tried to breathe deeply, but it hurt again. I tried to move my hand, tried to remember where the bullet came from.

The dunes?

The snow?

Was it Con-Tul, or was it Rodi, who I had lost this time?

Was it my planet?

Or my family?

Or was it just…

Me?

I shut my eyes and slept again, resolving to stay in the desert sands.

After all, Rodi was terrible at Marble Tokens.

I would always hold that secret satisfaction of being complicit in her triumph.

 

* * *

 

 

“Astra, Astra, _please.”_

Rao, not again.

Voices with the humming, this time.

“You’ve got to… god, you’ve got to wake up…”

Ha! _Absolutely not_ , I thought.

Whoever this person was, she had very little business telling me what to do.

“It’s been _days_ , Astra. The media is going insane and we can’t hold Cat for much longer.”

_Cat_.

That was one of the human pets.

I had met one, a snippy, amusing one, with such honor I had not imagined the human race possessed.

“And your shapeshifter friend? She won’t tell us _what_ she is, my boss is going insane.”

What business was it of mine if her superior was going insane?

Her, definitely. A woman's gentle, harried voice.

But why was she coming to me with problems concerning her shapeshifting cat? Couldn't she see I was being devoured by the sun?

“Astra… you’ve got to fight, you’ve got to _want_ to come back.”

I had no such desire. Streld was calm, and Rodi appreciated me. I was at work with my platoon, and my daughter’s eyes shown green like my own.

“Please, Astra, please god…”

What a very polite voice, to entice me back to waking. And a very… strange feeling grip? It was not soft, but most certainly smooth, synthetic again, pliable, thin. I could feel the outline of a hand taking my own, but it seemed like the hand was covered in—ah, gloves, of course. It would make sense, with the intense radiation from the sunlight.

That was what was within the capsule, was it not? What had shone round me, shone down upon my shoulders and tanned my skin in the desert?

She was holding my hands with heavy, thick rubber gloves, this feminine speaker beyond the sun’s reach.

“I can’t live knowing I’ve done this to you… to… to other aliens, who tear our properties down, and who terrorize our cities but… never to you, Astra.”

Why was _I_ so special?

I had torn cities apart before. I had also put them back together. I had swooped in on my almighty Kryptonian ship and mandated evacuations of entire _countries_ , not just cities. Who did this poor… girl? No… who did this small _human_ think she was talking to? Had she no understanding of my history? That I had killed as many combatants as the sniper who killed Rodisia, that I had revolted and burned and shouted and fought time and time and time again?

What did she know of me?

“Astra, I _love_ you… please.”

Oh.

Well then.

That certainly changed things.

 

* * *

 

Cell.

Rao above, the odds were in favor of a hospital unit, and here I was instead, curled up on the floor of a cell.

And it wasn’t red this time. It was green. Green and glowing and…

Sharp. Bitter. Scorching and tight and painful and tense and torture, it hurt, it stretched me across until my skeleton was nothing more than paper, my muscles nothing more than dust, my blistered nerves, my slowing heart—it was _constant,_ it was _consuming_ —and oh, _shit_ , it was worse than battle had ever been, because in battle, pain was diluted by adrenaline.

I had none of that here.

I only had a second’s notice before my stomach rebelled against me, and I collapsed back onto the floor. I don’t know what came up, but my entire abdomen clenched and folded in on itself, and my throat burned with the revolting taste of liquid regurgitation.

“Astra?”

_Rao_ , I was spasming. Shaking on all fours under that sickly green glow, I couldn’t see straight. My chest felt so heavy I couldn’t breathe, and my stomach flopped like my first adventure on a warp speed cruiser.

“Guard! _Guard!_ Get a fucking medic in here or I swear to Christ I will bury this place!”

That voice was gratingly familiar, but the pain held my attention. My vision blurred. My frame convulsed. It took so much effort to just… to just roll over. Back on my side, back so… so I didn’t…

_Rao_.

What if I asphyxiated on my own vomit?

Wouldn’t that be a way for a general to go.

“Fucking hell, where’s the MEDIC?!”

I felt vibrations to my right. And the shouting… the shouting was quickly escalating into full-blown screeching.

“I SAID WHERE’S THE GODDAMN MED—”

“Cat, they’re coming.”

I opened my eyes and focused against the eerie lime light.

Cat Grant, wrapped in black athletic shorts that hung down to her shins, stood in a glass octagon beside M’gann, who was also clad in a scratchy, ill-fitting black clothing. Cat’s tiny, manicured fingers were balled into fists and rested against the glass of her containment unit. M’gann was in there with her as well, one hand against her shoulder, the circles beneath her eyes aging her immensely, as if the weight of her five centuries were finally taking their devastating toll. Cat looked haggard and drawn as well. _Tiny_. Cat was so small, so breakable. Which was even more apparent when I took in the bandage around her forearm, the cut on her usually unblemished cheeks. Her hair was in a ponytail, how Alexandra used to come in when she wore her hair long, when it wasn’t tucked under the beanie I’d given her—

…Alex.

Alex!

The party, the auction, the dance and the drink and Max Lord and the circus freaks and Alex Danvers’s beautiful throat beneath my iron grip.

_Where was Kara, Alex?_

_Have you told her what you did to me, to us?_

_Do you still think you were in the right, you manipulative bitch?_

_Would you do it again, knowing I loved you, knowing you would wreck me?_

_Do you know, human, who you’ve crossed?_

_Do you know that I could end you with a single strike?_

_Alex_.

Rao above… where _was_ she?

What had I done to her?

“Alexandra?” I whispered.

By Rao’s grace, a panel slid open with the hiss of relaxed hydraulics, and none other than Alex Danvers tromped through the entrance, looking none the worse for wear.

“About time. You realize she’s been heaving for five whole minutes?" Cat spat. "With that kind of wound she’s lucky she’s not bleeding out in that damn cell you’ve—”

“Thank you, Ms. Grant,” Alex muttered, blinking momentarily against the blue light that scanned her eye before she moved toward the entrance of my cell. “I’ll take it from here.”

“Where’s my _lawyer_?”

“Cat, they’ve been through this,” M’gann chided, steering Cat back by the shoulders, urging her against the bench that had been graciously constructed in their small shared cell.

“Hey,” Alex knelt slowly and placed her hand on my back. She reached beneath my armpits, like I was some _child_ , unable to move of my own accord. “I’m going to get you up on the bench, alright?”

I nodded, unable to do much else, for though I had strength in my legs my stomach was still cartwheeling in painful swoops. Alex opened a metallic carrying case with all sort of vials and swabs and pills and various other medical supplies, her own little alien first aid. But I watched carefully as she slipped on a pair of purple latex gloves and placed her hand over my abdomen.

“I’m gonna lift this, okay?”

I turned my head to the side and stared at M’gann, who looked on mournfully, her hands curled carefully over Cat’s slim shoulders. Alex swiped something cool and sharp-smelling against my skin—antiseptic, maybe?—before fiddling with more tools in her useless box. M’gann dipped her head toward Alex and so I turned back to watch her, no matter how desperately I wanted to forget her.

She was methodical in her movements, selecting the vial, tearing open the plunger, the new needle, drawing the clear fluid through the metal that pulsed with that sick, lime tint that seemed to be surrounding us. I wondered at her actions, for she knew, certainly, from all that we had been through together, that a needle would be useless against me. But she nevertheless pinched my skin together and jabbed the point into me… _into_ me… and depressed the plunger with detached efficiency.

“Muscle relaxant, for the spasms,” she said, smoothing the black shirt down over my stomach. Her hands pulled at the wrinkles and I felt the fabric catch over the wrappings at my chest, dressings I’d really only just felt, with Alex’s hand on me. “I had to guess at the dosage because you… you haven’t eaten much lately.”

“H-Hah…”

My tongue tasted like unwashed, dried-out rags stained with coffee grounds. Everything was dim and green and constricted; I felt I was standing on a serrated knife’s edge, and that at any moment, I might fling myself headlong into blood-curdling pain.

“Water?” Alex asked, reaching for a plastic bottle.

I nodded and she removed her gloves, twisted the cap, and gently tilted my chin up. She poured water down my throat but it hurt to taste, hurt to swallow, hurt to feel how gentle she was with me. When I turned my head water dribbled out from the corner of my lip and she wiped at it, brushed a white, military-issue towel over my cheek and let her fingers linger there, near my skin, the curve of my jaw, before withdrawing just as smoothly.

“How did you…” I managed, though not all in one breath. “The needle? Alex, what did I…”

“You’ll be taken in for questioning soon now that you’re awake, Astra,” Alex said, slowly closing the metallic case, taking her time screwing caps back onto bottles and deconstructing her syringes. “There’s nothing I can do.”

“Why are they here?” I asked, nodding toward the other cell. “They’re not… why are you holding them? They did nothing wrong.”

“That’s not up to me.”

“Who is it up to, then?"

"Astra, don't do this."

"Where are we? You can’t just… M’gann I understand, but you can’t keep Cat here. She has a _child_ , Alexandra.”

“I—I know,” Alex answered, tearing her gaze away from me. She stood regretfully, keeping her eyes averted, her posture stiff, professional, as if I’d never loved her.

“Alexandra… Alex, wait!”

“Astra, don’t move, you will injure yourself further,” M’gann spoke from the other cell.

“What’s happened?” I asked, twisting against—holy _blektl_ —twisting at the trunk _hurt_.

I winced and struggled to stand, crossing my left hand over my body to grasp my right side as gently as I could manage. The bandages puffed beneath the loosed black shirt like stuffing inside one of the human play-bears; all fluff and no blood. “What is this place?”

“Some hideaway for the human governments to capture aliens,” M’gann answered quickly. “The party was raided, and they’ve already questioned us. They took all the aliens— _all_ of them, Astra—but Cat refused to leave me.”

“They had M’gann on the ground with some sort of… I can’t remember, but it targeted your mind, right?”

“Psychic disarmament,” M’gann mumbled. “I couldn’t move, but all the aliens in that tent—”

“Roulette?” I asked, trying to skip ahead and determine just how much they knew. Whoever _they_ were.

“Gone. Dead. I’m not sure.” M’gann shook her head, lips held tight and thin.

“They know that I’ve attended Roulette’s bouts. They know you and M’gann were fighting in those bouts. They might know more, but that’s all we’ve confirmed. Not another word, Astra,” Cat added.

“They didn’t—they didn’t split you up for questioning?”

“They got to us after the main tent came down and treated us both in the same med van before cottoning onto Miss Psychic over here,” Cat said, jerking her chin at M’gann. “Long enough to get our stories straight before… Astra, we haven’t even been technically arrested. It’s breaching every basic Miranda Right and I… I…”

“We don’t know how to fight this,” M’gann said. “It’s not like… they’re holding us, but there’s food, and water, and treatment and… it’s very bizarre, Astra, but they won’t let us go. They keep asking Cat about her links to the Sinclair trust, keep asking about Veronica’s relatives, asking me about Roulette’s recruitment, times, dates, places of previous bouts, names of people who have placed bets—”

“…and you gave it to them?”

“No,” Cat shook her head. “Lawyered up, even if they keep withholding counsel from me. And they informed M’gann that as an alien, she has no right to a lawyer.”

I borrowed a thought from Connie, and couldn’t think much other than _this is bullshit_ , but something else came out of my mouth instead: “This is terrifying.”

“And we still don’t know about Roulette, though it’s becoming more and more apparent that these men-in-black never picked her up,” Cat snipped.

“I shot her,” I said, trying to wrap my brain around what happened that night. I didn’t remember much of anything, waking up in that cell. Popcorn and caramel. A black and white kaleidoscope. Fury. Wrath. Anger and… and lust, distilled to such purity I couldn’t keep a handle on it, I couldn’t control it, not when I had Alex alone—

Alex.

No wonder she left me so quickly.

I had… I had taken Alex into the ladies room. I had pushed my fist through the wall and bitten her neck and torn her belt away and slid my hand inside…

I shut my eyes against the memories, but I only saw our reflections, panting and lost in that bathroom mirror.

_Oh, blessed Rao, forgive me my misdeeds._

My stomach seized once again and I tipped forward, throwing my head between my knees and dry-heaving against the rage that rose like unpredictable geyser streams. I had shot _civilians_. I was one touch away from _raping_ Alex, and her first response was to stay with me: _I don’t want to leave you like this_.

Rao, why hadn’t He taken me? Why hadn’t I died then? With all the pain in my chest I should have died, I should have gone, it would have been so much better if this world and every other were rid of the evils housed within my soul.

“Are you sure?” Cat asked me, ripping me back to the present, the entirely too-surreal present. Encased in glass boxes and shades of red and green, we looked like somber mutants on display at a human Christmas festival. “I wouldn’t tell them that. Again, we haven’t said anything.”

“I told them the aliens were blackmailed and forced to fight,” M’gann said. “Nothing more, nothing less.”

“They know you are a shapeshifter,” I said carefully, with no mention of her species. “I… I don’t know how I know that, but…” I chomped down on my tongue, afraid of giving more away than I should. “I remember bits and pieces of conversation. I don’t know from when, but I’m sure we are being monitored.”

“We are,” Cat said, pointing toward the corners—there were multiple ones in a room with several walls—to help me spot the cameras.

“So why then did they put us together?” I asked. “We have the chance to get our stories straight if… if we are taken into interrogation…”

“You’ve been gone for four days, Astra,” Cat said, slumping onto the bench nearest the wall. “We’ve already been to interrogation. Twice. And we told you, I lawyered up and told them to go fuck themselves both times.”

“They… why haven’t they released you yet?”

“Beats me,” Cat answered. “The night of the party, they took all of those other aliens in the raid, and… and we don’t think they had space enough to hold them all. It’s why we’re all in here together. There’s me, and I can’t do much here. They’ve got M’gann on some psychic lock-down and we thought you’d been… we thought they’d killed…”

“I’m sorry,” I said, because Cat and M’gann both were looking at me like I was a miracle, like I was a ghost come back to share their cage and they were actually happy about it. “I can’t remember everything but… I’m sorry.”

Cat placed her open hand against the glass and M’gann did the same. Despite my weakness, I reached for them, and smiled sadly, for I had known this solidarity in the field. It was the company of those who were willing to die together, or be _imprisoned_ together, for a cause. I did not believe I would find that here and yet… there we were.

“We’re unsure of everyone’s status but they seemed to have so much control over the various species. Like… like they knew exactly what to use against them, when they were already at their weakest. And all of them together? That’s at least a hundred separate beings… the fire power they had to bring them down?” M’gann shook her head. “It looked like a massacre, Astra. Like an army came in and just...” M'gann swiped her hand flat across the air in front of her, as if she were cutting people down with a single strike.

“What kind of humans could hold them?”

The hydraulics hissed again and my eyes gravitated back toward the entrance. But instead of Alex in her black, with her reserved, placid professionalism, a trail of soldiers in camo fatigues marched in, each with an overlarge gun, impractical for such a tight setting, and then two at the tail end, carrying metal cases like Alex had carried in the beginning. Behind them strode a round, large man, his blonde hair shaven to mold over his oval skull. I could not focus to make out the name woven over his left pocket, but his frown was not difficult to read in the least. In fact, all of the soldiers in the room oozed uneasy irritability, but thank God Cat hadn’t lost her bite just yet.

“I’ve got news clippings and confidential records stored on a secure server with enough information to ruin political and military careers all the way up to the head-honcho herself,” Cat hissed. “And if I don’t check in at least once a week all those records get emailed to more news stations than your sycophantic doughboys can count. If my body winds up in an unmarked grave, rest assured yours will, too.”

The large man in the middle of the procession did not seem bothered. “Ms. Grant, if you’d been more cooperative at the outset, you know you wouldn’t be here right now.”

“I’m not leaving without them, tubby,” Cat spat, beating one fist against the wall. “So where _the fuck_ is my lawyer? And if I can’t at least get him on the phone, you get Olivia Marsdin in here or I swear to God I will _ruin_ you.”

“The president’s out of the country for the time being, ‘mam,” the blonde man said, swinging his hands behind his back and puffing out his overlarge chest. “I’m afraid that’s just not an option, but we do have some paperwork for you to look over. Simmons?”

“If that’s an NDA, you can roll it up real tight and shove it up your ass,” Cat said, propping her fists on her imposing little hips and holding eye contact with a man that looked like he could swallow her. “Lawyer. _Now_.”

“Donahue, get the Kryptonian.” 

“What the—you were talking to _me_. She can hardly stand!” Cat shouted, banging once against the side of the cell.

“And you weren’t being cooperative,” blonde camo man said. “She’s due for her turn in the hot seat regardless of your answers, Ms. Grant.”

“I want your name and rank, soldier,” Cat seethed. “I want to make sure I get every letter correct when I go to print about the U.S. military’s unlawful imprisonment.”

“My name is General Samuel Lane of the United States Army, mam’. And I’m just doing my job. Simmons, the paperwork.”

I didn’t really register Cat’s remaining objections, because everything around me turned to echoes, as if I were hearing their conversation through water. I tried once more to focus my eyes but it was a feat, it was _difficult_ , and I had no idea why I’d suddenly begun feeling ten times worse than I already did, if that were even possible. The pieces of the succeeding interrogation are violent, and hard to share, but this story needs telling.

With me, General Lane didn’t start with the posturing.

He started with Kryptonite cuffs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this has been one helluva week (AND I STILL HAVE TWO DAYS LEFT GAH) but i was posting this if it killed me. sry its been a month. gen danvers week fell into between my 2nd and 3rd summer intensive thing and got me a little off track
> 
> so anyway i cried writing about rodisia and i just want astra to be happy


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for beatings and torture during an interrogation

The back-handed blow split the corner of my lip but I couldn’t wince, couldn’t _move_ , let alone put up the smallest resistance against the soldier charged with “incentivizing” me to talk.

“You know… _general_ ,” General Samuel Lane of the United States Army spoke my title as if it were sour and spoiled, as if it were something I hadn’t worked for decades to achieve.

He sat across from me at the table in the interrogation chamber in his camo fatigues, all beady-eyed and hostile. So much for human civility. With his lackey looming over me, General Lane leafed through a file of paperwork, periodically raising his focus to take me in, and then to _tut_ or _tsk,_ disgusted by what he saw.

The soldier by my side couldn’t meet my eye, even after the second, third, fourth blow, and then the ones that followed. After each unanswered questions, Lane would nod at the boy (he couldn’t have been more that three and twenty), but his face remained placid as he struck me. Another question, another non-answer, and another strike. It grew dull and predictable, and eventually, I felt numb to the pain.

The soldier kept hitting me and every time he raised his hand, I swore the glass behind General Lane shook, the ground beneath me rumbled, and I heard my soul crying out.

Of course, no one else would’ve known that it hurt.

I didn’t so much as breathe when they hit me.

“I know this isn’t your first interrogation,” Lane said, leaning over the table and onto his elbows. His brow was beaded with sweat, but he was just _sitting_ there. Sitting there and asking inane questions about alien hideaways and black-market smuggling and drop-sites and armories and all sorts of things I had no answer for. At the very beginning of our time in the room I sat, told him of Roulette’s blackmail and the betting, and then stopped talking. I relayed nothing about Cat’s involvement. Nothing concerning M’gann. Nothing to incriminate anyone other than Roulette and perhaps myself, the weakened General, beaten black and blue with a phantom bullet still throbbing in her chest.

“What would you have done to a hostile, three hours into an interrogation, if they stubbornly refused to give up information you needed to save lives?” Lane asked, nodding again toward the soldier standing over me.

_Not this_ , I thought, because their coercion was ineffectual. My hands were latched to the table before me in a pair of—what was it?— _Kryptonite_ handcuffs. They sapped me of what little energy I might’ve had after emerging from the holding cell. I could hardly breathe for the weight in my chest, and could hardly see for the swelling over my eye. My mouth tasted like iron. When I tried to tilt my head back, I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflective glass behind Samuel Lane’s back. To think, I had once been considered attractive on Krypton.

To think, Alex had called me beautiful six months ago.

Had they not checked in with the medic—with _Alex_?—before bringing me in? How could they think that I was anything other than physically numb? Perhaps even… well, I can admit this to myself now… mentally unhinged?

I felt pain about as palpably as I felt Krypton’s soil beneath my feet, or Kara’s tiny fingers wrapped round my own, or Alura’s steady hands, carding through my hair, preparing us both for our first ball with the High Councilors. None of it was real. Not those touches, and certainly not this pain. They could’ve continued beating me until I was within an inch of death, and it still wouldn’t have gotten them any closer to the answers they sought.

A _good_ general would recognize that, and change tactics if the ones he had been employing were not working.

I suspect General Lane had very little good left within him.

Of course, I didn’t tell him any of this. I had remained stubbornly silent for over two and a half hours. The most they got out of me was snot and spittle, a bit of blood for good measure, and an arched, incredulous stare, until the soldier reared back and smashed my cheekbone and my eye socket, rendering my expression somewhat more bulbous and grotesque. All incredulity I usually communicated with a look was erased and replaced with battered flesh.

General Lane sighed his disappointment.

“Hawkins, come in here, please.”

The man I assumed to be Hawkins entered, holding an unmarked silver brief case. He placed it before General Lane, then took up his position on the other end of the table so that I was effectively flanked to either side, as well as the front. There was a wall at my back, and I had no clue where I was. It felt like Rozz, but… surprisingly easier? Upon my arrest, I had to mourn my planet. My family. My memories, and my dreams of a better life for my niece. Now, I had only myself to lose. What little life I had built here paled in comparison to everything I lost decades ago.

I was never going to see Kara again… perhaps she was better off without me, if this was the type of company I kept. M’gann and Cat? Better off without one more alien going rogue and dragging them headlong into danger. The shop? Those kids? _My_ kids? Jeremiah and his election, Han and his finances, Leah and her recovery, Connie and her assignments… coffee shops were a dime a dozen in National City. They would find new employment in a place that was not periodically attacked by gunmen.

Alex was young enough to find some sort of love that worked for her in ways we didn’t. Young enough to find someone who didn’t shove her into bathroom stalls and burn entire buildings with her anger. Someone who never lied to her from the start. Someone who could love her and her flaws and her strengths and remind her that she matters—matters in ways that she can never see herself but, oh… she is so deserving of that love.

In that moment, I wished it could have been me who could've loved her that way.

(In every moment since, I have never been more grateful that it _is_ me).

And this city, the aliens and humans within it, would be free of me if I just submitted to the pain. I never belonged on this planet. It was never mine and it did not welcome me, no matter what little good I might have tried to do for it.

All the thoughts converged and melded into that weight that pressed outward against my chest, ran over my limbs, pushed against my throbbing head… that weight made my decision in the moment so much easier.

Whatever was in that box had the power to make me talk. It probably also had the power to kill me.

And maybe… maybe that was for the best.

I once was deployed to a planet whose surface was covered entirely with water. Islands sporadically erupted from the horizon, but the majority of our work was done on submarine ships and boats on the surface. I told my troops that if the time ever came on a mission, that drowning in an environment like this seemed inevitable and rescue unlikely, that it would be easier if they simply dove into it. I encouraged them to swim down and drink in and resign themselves to a dense, dim end. Perhaps it would be more peaceful that way. None of my soldiers had to accept such a fate on that mission, thank Rao, but I remembered that bit of advice. It seemed hollow in the wake of General Sam Lane and his silver briefcase of intimidation, but I couldn’t find it in myself to care.

I just breathed, and sat as far back as the cuffs would allow me.

It would all be over soon.

General Lane said something I didn’t hear. He pointed toward the briefcase and someone moved, I’m not sure who… but I was about to lose consciousness. I blinked, or perhaps… the lights flickered? My hairline felt sticky. I couldn’t see out of my left eye. I couldn’t hear out of my left ear. The shaking of the room grew thunderous, a seismic disturbance that only I seemed to register. Someone was beating on the glass on the opposite side of the wall. Something was tunneling up from the floor underneath me. Some lost voice was crying their anguish and it wouldn’t stop my ears from ringing.

Syringes and vials.

Pulsing, sickly lime liquid.

Little needles, little pricks, little holes in my skin, to compliment the crater that had been dug days ago, the one in my chest, the gaping, hollow hole where my heart once was.

_Sister_ , _I am coming._

I laughed deliriously. Still conscious, so the laugh must have upset the human General. I think one of the soldiers struck me again. Yes, more liquid, red in my eyes, iron like wine, sticking to my lashes and stinging places where my skin had been pulled back. They kicked the chair out from under me, and I dangled momentarily as I tried to find my feet. With my wrists attached to the cuffs at the center of the table, the metal dug into my arms, cut me, shredded little bits of muscle until I finally scrambled into place. My kneecaps smashed into the floor and my arms wrenched, screaming against the glowing restraints. My head fell forward because I was tired, I was so, so tired, and I was ready to meet my sister once again.

I missed Alura so much.

But then I came in through the interrogation door. Perhaps it was me, a healthier me, some out-of-body-power I had not realized Kryptonians possessed until they were in dire circumstances on this planet. It looked a little like me. It fought like me. It punched the first guard so hard in the jaw he reeled into the General, who had taken up the delicate poison with stubby, fumbling fingers. I heard the crunch of glass and watched the figure in black, the brown hair, the swift movements, the proficient way she crouched to knock Hawkins’s legs out from under him. He hit the ground hard and I felt it in my bones, my cramping quads, my bleeding, bruised wrists.

My specter had come in but couldn’t turn the table over, for it was bolted to the ground. But there was the grand sweep of an arm and the clatter of vial and medical equipment; there was the hurried tromp of people pouring into the room like helium suddenly filling a balloon—too much, too much, and not enough space, so the area was filled to bursting. Everything was light and high and all I could see was this mass of black moving toward me; I could almost hear my name on her lips, from the ear that still worked… I could almost hear the click of the firearm she pulled from Simmons, her fury as she turned and pointed it at the room.

“Stand _down_ , Agent Danvers!”

“No!”

“Alex, be sensible here—”

“Sir, with absolutely no respect implied, I did not sign up for this!”

“Henshaw, what the hell is this?! Get control of your people!”

“What are you trying to accomplish here, Alex? You want to throw away five months of work over a hostile not cooperating in interrogation—”

“This is torture, sir, and you know it! She doesn’t know anything—she doesn’t… she doesn’t _know_.”

“She killed civilians—”

“She killed one couple who had just paid for an underage alien sex slave, and brought down an illegal alien trading ring in the process. She’s a damn hero; those deaths were collateral damage. You have to know she’s on the up and up, or else she wouldn’t have been in there with the Grant woman.”

“Alex, put the gun down—”

“Or what? You’ll shoot me like you… like you trained me to d-do t-t-to them? You talked a real big game about what we do for this planet when you came recruiting, Director, but if this is it? This?! I don’t want any part of it.”

I could hear her voice crack even though my vision blurred. Alex moved in front of me in her black, but I could barely see her. She reached for my hands, brushed my fingers incidentally, and then the strain on my arms released. The cuffs were gone, but I felt no better. I just fell, weak and spent, still not completely sure what was going on. I wish I could remember the sequence of events that followed. I wish I could tell you how brave she looked, how fierce she was, how she bloodied noses and bruised ribs and played the dashing knight like in the romantic human stories of legend.

But whatever I tell of the rest of the encounter will only be through her voice, because I passed out only a moment later. She crouched down to catch me, and I felt her hold me, wrap me up, scoot us back against the wall as she kept the gun trained on soldier and agent alike.

“Alex?” I asked, before swiftly losing consciousness.

She always speaks of her actions in underwhelming terms. She… I believe the phrase is “sells herself short.” But know this: Alex came for me, and single-handedly stopped Lane from following through with the Kryptonite injections. Once I recovered, it didn’t matter to me that they wouldn’t have gotten anything from me anyway. Alex didn’t know I wasn’t going to break, but she came in anyway. It didn’t matter that the President had phoned to put a halt to General Lane’s barbarous methods, for Alex didn’t know that either. It didn’t matter to me that she had been the one to shoot me in the first place, because in my haze, I finally heard the voice that woke me, the one who claimed to love me, the one who stubbornly pulled me back when I was ready to succumb to a bleak inevitability. Alex Danvers came in prepared to take on the U.S. Military and the entire DEO so that I would not be tortured.

And perhaps I didn’t realize it then, slipping in and out as I was, curled into her like a child… but I think that’s maybe where some part of me knew—and knew with unwavering certainty—that Alex Danvers loved me more than I ever deserved.

I only wish that I would’ve held onto that fleeting feeling when I woke up again.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

A dripping ice pack blocked out the light from the ceiling overhead the medical bed. The hum from the bulbs was soft but persistent, rushing in and out of my ears cacophonously enough that I knew I must have been regaining some of my powers. I shifted and felt the imprints of pain in my body, faded, most certainly, but I couldn’t forget that they’d happened.

“Hey there champ, take it easy.”

I did not want to take anything easily. What I wanted was to leave the sterile room with glass walls and antiseptic scents. I wanted to leave or die or go back to sleep, and maybe then the confusion wouldn’t be as bothersome.

I remember sleeping for a long time, somewhere warm and close. I dreamed again, but this time of more mundane subjects: triple shot lattes and student elections, the Halloween decorations we’d hung in the windows last fall and the exorbitant amount of money I spent on Facebook ads, promoting our pumpkin spice lattes. I dreamed of a time when Alex had longer hair, when she smiled uncertainly as she stared over my shoulder at the tablet while I selected filters for the shop’s Instagram photos. I dreamed of my thesis defense and then dreamed I _missed_ my thesis defense, which, thankfully, I hadn’t, as that would come in the fourth year of the program.

But I had missed two finals and couldn’t be sure if Jeremiah had sent the tax forms in. They were supposed to be postmarked by the 17th, but I was completing my final, and he was rallying for one last push in the student elections, and somehow the audit we’d gotten last year seemed even more dangerous, what with the U.S. government alerted to my presence… was I going to be able to file for the usual small business exemptions? Or, more importantly, was I to be kicked out of school? Tracked? Were they going to take away my shop, the one decent thing I’d built since arriving on this Rao-forsaken planet?

It was time to go. If they hadn’t the resolve to kill me, then they likely didn’t have the grounds to detain me. I didn’t want to be confined to a room, powerless, feeling as if I were living in a human fish bowl, as Alex once described it.

I’d already been beaten and shot, what more could the human soldiers want from me?

I heard a heavy plastic _click_ and a different hum from that of the lights. A mechanism whirred, and my bed was unceremoniously tilted so that I sat upright. Or, more upright than I had been sitting. The ice pack slid down my face and plopped in my lap before Alex could catch it. It was melted and pliable to the touch, condensation having gathered on the exterior. That slimy, wet sensation was all I could focus on, because I couldn’t even look at her.

I wanted to leave and I wanted to sleep and I never wanted to see Alex again.

“You’re probably not very happy with me right now,” Alex mumbled. She took the ice pack from my lap and shoved it in a plastic tray to my right, then tried to catch my eye.

You must understand I was in no mood for talking.

“I assume you… have some questions,” she began, standing from the chair at my bedside, moving to the wall where a cardboard box of sterile purple gloves protruded like some utilitarian medical décor. She slid the gloves over her deadly, dangerous fingers, fingers that had pulled the trigger that had put me here in a mechanical bed.

She inclined her head in my direction seeking an answer, but I didn’t respond.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t answer her. Or that I didn’t have questions. But I know what it is to feel powerless—actual _powers_ aside. I’ve been in the field too much, and I’ve seen mistakes happen too often. I’ve been sentenced for crimes that could’ve saved billions, and so I knew what power was.

She had it.

I didn’t.

And there was nothing left to say.

“Astra, please.”

There was really only one thing that mattered after all of it, and it most certainly wasn’t me.

“Where are Cat and M’gann?” I asked.

“Home. The president didn’t know about Cat Grant during the attack, but when she found out, it wasn’t pretty for the Army. We released your shapeshifting friend to, but not without… well, we’ve got tabs on her.”

I didn’t expect any less. It would likely be the same for me. Subject to surprise inspections, stop-and-frisk laws, held up for no reason at airports and train stations and international borders, should I ever try to travel. They were going to “keep tabs on me,” as Alex said, and I would never know just how much they knew, and how much they didn’t. I’d been in prison for decades and my reward for a sentence served would be constant surveillance and privacy violations.

I rolled over to my side, away from her. There were no wires or tubes or leads or needles sticking out of my skin. There were no cuffs on my wrists. Should I try to escape? Dare I try to levitate? With M’gann and Cat gone, it seemed easier to take a chance on something ridiculous (like escape), but also wholly easier to dissociate. What would be the point in trying to get out? Especially if they could just shoot me down again.

What had been the point to _any_ of this?

I shut my eyes and did my best to blink myself away from this world. One blink, one concentrated, gargantuan thought, and maybe I’d be back in a canyon with my daughter. Other species—those I’d heard rumors of in the fifth dimension—they could travel anywhere, in parallel universes, in _any_ universe, a universe, perhaps, where Rodi came home to Alex and I every day after her time at Instruction. A universe where Alura didn’t fret when I took Rodi and Kara down to the estuary outside of Kandor, along the River Mosanel. A universe where I could look at Alex again and not feel my heart clench.

Alex prodded at my shoulder with her gloved hand, but I didn’t turn over.

“The sooner you do this, the sooner you can leave,” she whispered.

I looked back over my shoulder and told myself I didn’t care about the tears in her eyes.

(Of course I cared, and of course I hurt, but how do you let yourself feel anything when the pain is so great? When everything you love has turned on you and then saved you but still detained you and then cared for you? How could I not care? How could I let myself care?).

“I won’t talk to you anymore, I won’t… I won’t ever come near you again, I swear, just—let me clear you?” Alex begged, lips drawn in a thin line as she gathered herself. She kept twisting to the side, wiping her tears on the shoulder of her shirt so she wouldn’t contaminate her gloves. She took a deep breath and sat atop the side of the mattress, placing her hand at the small of my back. “Let me clear you so you can go home, Astra.”

She said it so genuinely. Like she believed I had a home to go back to. Like she hadn’t kept me away from the last bit of home that remained.

I flopped back over and stared at the humming ceiling. The lights blurred and another tear fell. I’m not sure how I was still crying; I’m fairly certain I was dehydrated.

Alex shined a pen light in each of my eyes. She held something cold and round to my chest. She took notes from beeping monitors and touched my face with her hands. She instructed me to look at her index finger, to focus, and to follow her movements. She poked me in the torso and on the bottoms of my feet, and asked if I felt pressure when she squeezed my fingertips. I nodded. Or I shook my head. But I wouldn’t speak to her.

“Okay, last… last test…” Alex muttered, staring down at her clipboard and robotically ticking boxes with a pen. “What is your full name?”

She had allowed me to stand up and move behind a large white screen to change while she made her last notes and asked her final question. I was pulling the black t-shirt over my head when I heard it. It was such a ridiculous question. Hadn’t she known me, my titles, my world? Hadn’t she whispered my name, and shouted it, and cried out, and moaned it once into my neck, briefly, beautifully, while we rocked together and hurt each other all the harder...

_What is your full name?_

I laughed at the question, delirium from my beating returning. I sorted through the black pants her organization had offered me and fixated on a zipper, a hemline, a pocket; I felt my shoulders shaking, sounds tumbling over my lips without control. I couldn’t stop. Manic. Laughing.

Lost.

Had I managed decades in Rozz, only to go insane on earth?

I’d filled out any number of forms and papers and surveys and had put my name, _Ashley Green_ , on each of them; but I was tired of lying, and tired of pretending, and tired of trying to convince myself that I wasn’t still hurting.

_You don't look like an Ashley._

“Astra?” Alex asked, slipping behind the screen, looking for all the world like a lost little grad student, golden under fairy lights outside my shop, in search of an Americano with a little skim milk to cool the liquid—she always drank it to fast, more fuel than anything to savor.

That grey beanie that she gave to me.

A morning in a mattress shop.

Looking over the edge of a textbook to see her absorbed in her reading, in her notes, in her calculations and her grading, gnawing on the end of a red pen so hard I wondered that the ink didn’t spill from the plastic and paint her a vampire.

That kiss we shared, holding NASA mugs in the front of my shop.

I missed how easy it was.

I missed dancing with her.

I missed how I felt around her, when she would come looking for me and lean over the counter in her leather jacket and ask for me by name, and wait for me, wait for me because she _wanted_ me.

I missed knowing I would do anything for her, and the way she made me feel like I hadn’t lost everything.

I _missed_ her.

I wanted my Alexandra back, and it made me think… made me remember a different betrayal from months ago:

_“I want her back,” Alex sobbed, crossing her arms over her torso to hold herself together. She shook and sobbed and moaned little despairs that I could not make sense of. She cried and I waited until I could stand it no longer. I returned to her and she fell into my arms, and we cried, and we held each other, and she repeated her wish into my shoulder until I felt it seared against my skin: “I want her back… I want_ Ashley _, I want Ashley_ _back_ _.”_

“I’m sorry,” Alex said, jolting me from my memories. She shook her head, bringing a hand up to her lips to push those sad sounds down. She looked up at me like I had answers for her. “I’m just… I can’t believe they did that to you. I can’t believe… I can’t believe _I_ —”

“Don’t,” I said, yanking one pants leg on, and then another, the cold of the floor under my bare feet shocking in that way that temperatures had been for me since my sensory perceptions had been heightened. I concentrated and… and… lifted, just a little, levitated quickly just to see if I could.

“I wouldn’t push yourself too much these first 48 hours,” Alex chanced.

“Really, Alex? Because of the bullet, or the beating?” I snapped.

“You—you checked out okay, Astra. There’s no swelling, all the lacerations have sealed up because of the sun beds, you shouldn’t be able to feel any pain—“”

“But I do,” I interrupted her, crossing my arms over my chest and leaning against the wall. I curled in on myself and stared at the ground, still trying to get a handle on precisely where I would go from here. “Echoes of pain, of course, but it still _hurts_ , Alex.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You said that already.”

“I know, I—but what else can I say? It would take… it would take a lot longer than a ten minute debriefing in the medbay. You deserve a better explanation than that. You deserve… you deserve so much better than what I gave you,” Alex sniffled, but she had stepped closer, close enough that she orbited round me, but not within reaching distance, not anywhere near as close as we’d once been to each other, around each other, pulled and repelled and drawn back again and again, like bombastic currents of energy that were all at once attracted and simultaneously repulsed by the other.

“I’ll understand if you never want to speak to me again,” she said.

“I had considered it,” I said, finally looking up to take her in.

She looked exhausted. My marks and bruises may have faded, but hers had not. She’d taken a blow to the cheek, and a dark bruise was forming in the spot I’d loved to kiss because I found her blush so becoming. The black tactical wear seemed to swallow her, and only emphasized just how drawn and sallow her face looked. The furrows of her brow were etched deep with concern, and the smile lines round her lips drawn tight to keep herself in check.

I wondered if she had smiled much since I attacked her on the night of the circus. I wondered if she had slept much, or eaten much, or if she'd seen the sun.

“I never meant for… I never meant for this to interfere with your life,” Alex said.

“What is this place?”

“The DEO… the Department of Extranormal Operations.”

“I take it I am… ‘extranormal’.”

Alex nodded and removed the purple latex gloves she had worn for my final examination. She swiped at tears and took a deep breath, doing her best to hold my gaze. “This was the job I got last semester. I was… I was out one night, drunk off my ass and crying over you and our director—I don’t know how he knew, but he did—he found me in the drunk tank the next morning and I joined up. I thought… I always thought we were protecting people, here…”

Her uncertainty was apparent; her loyalty, tested. I’d seen it in soldiers after coming back from some of their first field missions, when they’d seen a comrade blown to pieces and had to come to terms with the reality of war.

“Was… was that your first time on an operation, Alex?”

“It was just supposed to be recon,” she confessed, copying my stance, hugging her arms round her chest. “We weren’t supposed to engage _at all_ , but I saw you there and…” she bit her lip and thumbed away another tear. “Something was wrong. You were… it’s like you were being mind-controlled and I… I have some theories, I was able to draw some blood while you were under the sunbeds, but Kryptonian blood... it's unstable, volatile. I found a foreign compound and—and I’m working on figuring this out, I swear, so nothing like this happens again, so that I’m not forced to—to—”

“Shoot me?” I asked her, feeling a pang in my heart when I watched her lip quiver. “Shoot Kara?” I whispered.

She mouthed at the open air, trying for words, looking as if she might vomit. Her cheek twitched but she nodded tightly, then dipped her head to the floor once more. Just looking at me seemed too great a task for her in that empty white room.

“Mind-control, you say?”

“Yes,” she answered.

It took a while to absorb, but even as I was hollering for vengeance, the general in me recognized the _by-any-means-necessary_ nature of the situation. I didn’t want to make her feel better, but it seemed the sensible thing to do: “Then you made the right call.”

“No,” Alex shook her head. “I didn’t… I didn’t sign up for—”

“But you did, Alex,” I corrected her. “And when faced with protecting civilians or… I’m hardly precious to you anymore, you shouldn’t feel like what you did to an unpredictable enemy was anything other than protocol.”

Alex’s head snapped up and her mouth gaped as she took a step closer. “… you… you’re not my enemy.” Tears poured more freely over her bruised cheeks. My chest felt unbearably tight.

“You’re everything to me, Astra,” she said. “You can’t think… all of this?” she gestured wildly to the buzzing lights overhead, the medical equipment beeping around her, the glass walls behind the tiny screen, the cameras watching our every move. “It was for you. And for Kara, and no, she doesn’t know about this. I’d never tell her about any of this, but I… I had to figure out a way to protect you—”

“So you became a soldier?”

“We’re called field agents.”

“Nevertheless,” I said, reaching out to lay a hand on her arm. It felt good to touch her, but I wondered if I overstepped. “There are greater challenges ahead if you choose a soldier’s life. I would not have wanted this for you.”

“But it’s my choice,” she argued. “And if it means putting myself in harms way to protect you from everything out there, to protect you from _each other_ , then I’m going to do it.”

“And what about protecting us from what goes on in here, Alex?” I challenged. “You must know… I cannot be the first alien your army general has beaten.”

“He was wrong, but he’s not our people,” she rushed to defend. “He… it’s different, because you were innocent.”

“And do you think that the majority of aliens in that cosmic circus were not innocent?" I argued. "They were roped into barbaric fighting for fear of exposure to the very people you now work with, Alexandra.”

“We’re trying to protect the public,” Alex stood straighter, regaining some of the backbone I had admired in her from the start. She looked every inch the regimented soldier and it suited her well. “Thank god it was me that found you, Astra. If someone else had come across you once you’d swallowed that poison—”

“And for all of my actions while under the influence of that substance, I ask your forgiveness,” I said. I had withdrawn my hand from her arm but she had stepped in again, closer, _again_ , as if she wasn’t disgusted by the sight of me. As if all of the complex connections between our personal and professional lives were of no consequence.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“I hurt civilians.”

“And we contained the situation. That’s what we’re about,” Alex said, reaching out, but stopping just short of actually touching me. “Can you ever forgive me for… for shooting you?”

“I’m less concerned with the shooting than the lying,” I said.

“That’s fair,” she said, moving her arms from across her chest to place them on her hips. “But the lying… you did your fair share of that in the beginning, too.”

“I _had_ to.”

“So did I!”

“Rao,” I grumbled, rubbing my temples with my fingertips. I could feel my anger being leeched out of me by some outside force. Fatigue usurped my residual anger, and I had no hopes of applying logic to my feelings that night. Or day? I had no idea what time it was.

“And do you know what I find strangest of all, Alexandra?”

She shook her head, and I had to grin at my own helplessness. I chuckled as I thought, somewhat darkly, that she would be the perfect soldier. She willingly saw to it that I was protected, even after I’d nearly violated her.

“I still miss you,” I confessed, feeling the heat of tears burn, feeling that wet, full sensation of moisture against my lashes. It was completely different than lasers, and my throat felt choked and clogged, nothing like when I cooled drinks at the shop with my frosty breath. I felt for Alex despite everything, and I felt so deeply it would only be a detriment to us both.

“I miss you, too,” she said, taking the last step that separated us before quickly glancing over her shoulder. When she saw no one observing, she turned back and opened her hands to me. “Can I…?” she asked, awkwardly extending her arms.

I stepped into her and wrapped my arms round her back. She clung to my shoulders, twisted her head and buried her nose in my neck, her fingers in my hair, her torso pressing against my hammering chest. She still smelled like pomegranate shampoo and lab antiseptic. She still felt small and human in my arms.

She still felt like _mine_.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so, so _sorry_ , Astra—”

“I don’t know, Alex,” I mumbled against her. “I’m sorry, I… I don’t know anything any more.”

I squeezed her tighter and she flinched, and so I loosened my hold.

My strength had returned, as had my flight, and my super hearing, my x-ray vision. I could see beyond the screen—a tall dark man in black watching us carefully, hovering about outside those flimsy glass walls. Encroaching on our moment, and whatever came of it.

She breathed wetly against my neck and we cried against each other. It felt like an ending.

After several endless minutes I felt her release her grip on my shirt and wriggle out of my arms. Her face looked candy-cane striped, pink and white and twisted.

“Let me take you back to your apartment.”

“That’s not necessary,” I said, chancing a glimpse over the top of the screen. The tall man in black was gone, but for some reason I didn’t feel any better about it.

“It’s late, and you’re… you’re alone,” Alex said. “Please.”

I didn’t feel like fighting her.

I kept my head trained on my ill-fitting black boots as I followed Alex down hallways and into elevators, around large, rocky walls and through domed ceilings that looked something like a mountainous cavern. Instead of turning towards the fleet of black vehicles parked in designated spaces behind a chain-linked fence, we headed for a lot with painted yellow spaces. At the front was a motorbike I recognized—Alexandra’s, with only one helmet. She hopped on and donned her helmet, but didn’t offer me one. I no longer needed it, and she didn’t often travel with a partner.

“Hold tight,” she said, kicking off and motoring down the off ramp. “… not that tight.”

I grinned into her leather jacket, black as the darkness around us.

And what gorgeous darkness it was.

We were miles away from civilization. I saw stars flood the sky in long brushes of navy and deepest, sparkling indigo. I saw the shadows of mountaintops and the beginnings of a twisted highway, snaking along ridges and inclining through passes. My sense of direction had been lost completely ever since my detainment at her Department base. But beyond it all I trusted Alex to take me back, even if I didn’t trust us to love each other anymore.

We rode for an hour or so and the night grew thicker. I leaned with her on sharper curves and felt the warmth of her abdomen beneath my touch. My eyes watered in the wind so I tucked my head against her shoulder and inhaled her for as long as the ride lasted. We eventually crested one final hill, and I saw this explosion of light before us. An interstate, with beams of gold shooting along the straight-aways; a grid of gleaming balls from suburbia sprawled all the way to the coast, where twinkling skyscrapers interrupted the smooth darkness like excessive punctuation in a sentence. The ride was less fluid itself as Alex navigated off-ramps and stop-lights, flew past eighteen-wheelers and other late-night travelers. It seemed to take us a very long time to get back to the university grounds downtown, but we made it eventually. When we turned down the street to the shop, all was quiet.

She motored up toward the shop and parked her bike on the curb, shutting off the engine. I dismounted and she removed her helmet, running fingers through her hair and readjusting her rumpled jacket.

“Can I walk you up?” she asked, swinging her leg over the bike.

I turned back to look at my shop, fairy lights all aglow, streaks from glass cleaner having built up round the edges of the large front window. The interior was dim, but my attention was drawn to a hastily scrawled sign taped up to the door:

_Closed Until Future Notice_

I had a feeling that if I checked our social media pages, a similar update would have been posted as well. Who had finally made that call? Probably Connie; she would've been the one to file a police report as well, if any existed concerning my disappearance.

There were still so many questions left unanswered. About Alex, and her organization. About me, and Cat, and M'gann, and how much this... this DEO knew about each of us. Did they know about M'gann's bar? They had to know about my shop, if Alex was bringing me here.

Should I even bother reopening if I was likely to be arrested again? Would someone come in and take over? Would the kids still have jobs in a week without me?

“Astra," Alex tried again. "Can I—”

“No, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said, moving toward the front door of the building. I jiggled the handle. Locked. And of course, I didn’t have my keys. Cat did, I think… I left them at her office building last night—last week?—before we’d gone to Roulette’s circus. “I’ll have to fly up anyway.”

“Oh, well… right,” Alex said, dipping her chin down before taking a step into the light.

And there she was. The girl I fell in love with. Smart. Brave. Beautiful. Always burdened by a lingering sadness that was becoming less mysterious by the second.

“If I say ‘I’m sorry’ one more time, I’m going to scream,” Alex whispered.

“If I hear it one more time, I will do the same,” I replied.

“So where does that leave us?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m tired, Astra,” she said. "I'm tired, and I miss you."

“I am also very tired,” I confessed, taking one careful step closer to her. “I never believed mine would be an easy life… but I never expected this.” I placed my hand on her cheek, careful not to apply pressure to her bruise. "I never expected you."

“Me neither,” she said, turning into my touch. “I just wish, god, there are so _many_ things I could’ve done—”

“But you didn’t, and you can’t go back to them,” I said, leaning into her. I pressed my cool, frozen lips to her bruised cheek and lingered a moment, savoring my final chance with her. “But I do not think we can maintain this… this volatile existence any longer. Goodbye, Alexandra.”

I pulled away and took a quick glance down both sides of the street, bent my knees, and—

“Astra—Astra, wait!” she said, clutching at my arm. She didn’t want to leave it this way. I didn’t either, but I didn’t see any way around this farewell. There were too many factors beyond our control, and, the ones we might have once controlled? They had grown exponentially, fed by lies and betrayal and some noble notions of a greater good on opposing sides.

“We can’t keep doing this,” I argued, removing her hand and backing away.

“But Astra, you have to know—”

“Please don’t, Alex—”

“Astra,” she said, tearing up again. “Astra, I… I love—”

“Don’t!” I shouted, and rocketed off into the sky.

I breached the stratosphere so quickly my tears froze in crystals on my face. Alex was earthbound, and I was alien, and that was all we would ever be.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> omg i know i finally updated but school started back and i've been bombarded. we're really gonna be down to the final 3-4 chapters here, though, so know that after all these chapters of utter pain we gotta let the comfort come. i promise you guys. 
> 
> thank you times a jillion for sticking with this (and with me!) for so many months. it seems slow burns of angst and hurt/comfort upwards of 100k are just a thing i love to torture myself with.
> 
> best to all my brave ones out there :D


	17. Chapter 17

I arrived at M’gann’s bar in the deep dark before dawn. She was in the apartment upstairs, sitting on her couch, eyes bloodshot and still.

We didn’t say much. Neither of us could sleep, but I got enough out of her to know she wasn’t physically injured. I got enough out of her to know that the bar below had been devoid of customers for going on three days now, after some sort of raid from alien-investigating mercenaries—the _DEO_ , or whatever it was. I learned that she and Cat had been looking into legal measures concerning my release, even going so far as to petition the President of the United States to sign-off on a temporary house arrest, with Cat as some lofty prison matron.

Not much of a prison in a skyscraper, M’gann had muttered.

But she knew better, certainly. An existence could be a prison, given the right parameters.

I asked about Cat. About Carter. About the bar, and the raid, and the tracking device M’gann had ripped out of her forearm with a razor blade and a pair of forceps, and several gallons of potent Mohrion wine. The deep gash had been crudely sewn together and I knew, even despite her Martian powers, that a wound that deep would likely scar. She bore so many others that I hated to see her acquire another at my expense.

“And what of Alex?” she asked me, passing over a cup of alcohol. I don’t remember what it was, only that it was warm and sweet, and made my brain feel addled in a far more pleasant way than the drugs and poisons had when I’d been imprisoned by the DEO. “What does she have to say about all of this?”

“That she’s sorry,” I answered, puffing icy breath over the surface of the liquid. It would not burn me as I sipped, for I was immune once again to the sensation of temperature extremes (but I was still getting used to having my powers again). “And that she wishes… we both wish for many things, but wishes have never done me much good.”

“Well, _I_ wish I knew more about that place,” M’gann said. “You didn’t see the kinds of weapons they carried, Astra. And those soldiers… marching those species in and out of the cells…”

“No matter how badly she hurt me, I don’t see Alex working for an organization that would…would…”

“Exterminate aliens?” M’gann finished for me. She brought her own drink up and gulped, chugged, tried to force down enough that she might finally feel the lightheadedness that Martians had a harder time acquiring due to their metabolism on earth. “Alex might not fully understand… sometimes you give your own people a certain amount of leeway until you see the horrors firsthand. It would not be the first time that humans have used one of their own as a cog in an immense machine.”

“But they let us go,” I said.

“I’m not so sure,” M’gann answered, abandoning her drink to lean her head against my shoulder. “My arm is certainly worse off for my ‘freedom’. And you, with no tracker… I don’t know what Alex had to promise her superiors, but I’m grateful for it. I don’t know what I would’ve done if they’d killed you.”

I didn’t know quite what to say to that. I knew, back when she was leaning up against me, that I’d almost given up more than once while under the influence of that poison in the DEO’s medbay. I felt guilt for that concession then, with M'gann leaning against me.

“You are my dearest friend, Astra.”

My heart hurt with the weight of those words, as if somehow the organ had been compressed by my torso, as if the walls of my ribs were shrinking while it pumped against iron bands, frantic and throbbing.

“I’m only sorry it took such sadness for me to tell you,” she finished.

We leaned against each other and dozed restlessly, blinking against a stubborn sunrise that shined on us after one of the darkest periods we shared on this planet. M’gann, in all her wisdom, did make me reconsider Alex, even if she had done so inadvertently.

Her apology.

Her profession of love.

Why is it that we must nearly lose those most precious to us before we reveal the depth of our feelings? And why had she clung so steadfastly to me after the betrayal? Why is it that she waited, and waited, when waiting had brought her nothing more than heartache?

I once waited for judgment from a republic that held all of my faith. Bound by duty, and what more could I claim now, than lost civilizations and stardust?

“I can think of no one better to hold my heart, M’gann. Our losses bind us in ways this Earth does not. You—you are so very dear to me, as well, and I count myself lucky to call you friend.”

“How is it that two friends rebuild what will inevitably crumble?” M’gann whispered. “Is this not an unwinnable war?”

I closed my eyes and sunk down into the couch cushions, shifting my arm to cradle her closer to me.

“Building in secret did nothing for us. Hiding… it makes it seem as if we have something of note to discover.”

“They know our movements now,” M’gann said. She glared toward her dim kitchenette and the small table. Two bright yellow rubber gloves she used for dish washing were spattered with ruddy brown stains, dried blood and a shiny metal blade abandoned on the table top, the tracker winking ominously amongst them. The DEO knew where M'gann stayed. Alex had driven her right to the shop. 

They knew.

There was no getting that information back.

“I'm still just... I'm still confused by the motives behind our release,” I said. "They should've kept me, especially, if not you. I'm Kryptonian. I'm of their favored son's homeworld."

“They didn't let us go, Astra, they let their media queen go,” M’gann corrected. “Had we not made benevolent human friends in high places, I doubt our fates would have been as fortunate. After your treatment at their hands, I cannot… I cannot see beyond their cruelty.”

“I confess, I do not understand how Alex was able to petition for my release.”

“Do you believe it was Alex, or Cat?”

“Both,” I thought. “Neither. I was unconscious by the time they removed me from interrogation, but it took me roughly sixty-five hours in… in… Alex called them ‘sun-beds’. She said she had been working on them for, uhm, for something. A project or a—no, that’s not right. I don’t remember. I don’t know if I even care, but… but they healed me. It was as if—”

“They were made for you?” M’gann asked.

“Maybe.” Though even then, I knew it wasn’t for me.

“I do not doubt that she cares for you, Astra,” M’gann said, but the wave of caution flowing in her tired voice foreshadowed her distaste. “But a woman who would result to emotional extortion cannot remain in my good graces.”

“I fear you would not have liked my sister very much, then,” I sighed, remembering the spy beacon, Alura’s desperate attempt to talk some sense into me before the High Councilors came. Alura was more warrior than many gave her credit for, but her weapons were the pen and her charisma, her wit and her knowledge of accounts. She leveraged emotion against me, and had won the tiny skirmish between ourselves. The greater battle of Krypton she lost, and lost terribly, though some might count me a winner.

I had survived.

Survived... but come to _this_.

“I fear those closest to us—as well as ourselves, Astra—have all had to make difficult choices. The only difference is that they do not see the affects those choices have on you, and I do. You must allow me my protective tendencies.”

“The more you talk, the better case you make for Alex’s behavior in relation to Kara,” I chuckled humorlessly. It all seemed cyclical and repetitive; a scenario with different players in different places, and yet, strikingly similar.

We held each other on a second-hand couch, drinking our sorrows until we could drink no more, watching Earth’s chilling sunrise. This was the world we’d found ourselves in, and it held no love for us.

 

* * *

 

 

I took drunken flight at dawn and returned to the shop to find an unmarked manila envelope waiting on the doorstep. It was thick, heavy, with my name scrawled across it in impatient print. I recognized the script from nights spent hovering over her shoulder while she took notes on biology, knowing not that those notes were being transcribed for a species other than her own.

_Alex_.

Her alliances were nothing short of peculiar.

Within the envelope were secrets that could ruin her organization. Locations and coordinates, names and dates. A list of weaponry, the locations of arsenals. Of ongoing experiments. Addresses of labs, links to private contractors. It was distasteful to see Max Lord’s name on that list, but no matter there. He was fueling a war on both sides: helping Roulette to shuffle the prisoners into fight, while partnering with the military to help them suppress Roulette’s tiny revolts. An opportunist if there ever was one. Slimy. The worst kind. At least purists believed in something, even if it was despicable. I’ve never harbored much taste for luke-warm loyalties, and if I could take out one piece of Max Lord’s empire in the running of this rigged race, then all the better.

Inside the envelope was still more information: a running history of decades of internal discord in this phantom organization, of the operatives of America who called themselves the Department of Extranormal Operations.

And then, perhaps above all else, was the letter.

 

* * *

 

 

_Astra,_

_It will not matter much to you now,_ she wrote. _Not after what I’ve done to you. But your arrest has never been my endgame, no matter what the DEO seeks to accomplish. We surveil, we protect, we arrest, but we are an organization built on orders from above, and oftentimes I find those orders are at odds with my personal agenda._

_Surely you’ve guessed it by now?_

_Kara._

_All for her._

_Everything I do is for her._

_One night when I was fourteen years old, soldiers in black books with heavy guns came for my father. Kara had already been with us for two years, and we didn’t think anyone besides Kal-El knew of her existence. We were wrong, and we were vulnerable. Those men took my father that night, and I watched him fade. I watched him withdraw and I watched as they exploited his research. Six months into his tenure with the DEO, on one of the many overnight operations he typically took with them, he was killed. Or so they say._

_I don’t know how it happened. We don’t even know where it happened, and we never got to bury him. Was it even an alien? Did it happen in my front yard? Did some turncoat agent, allied with a higher military power, slit his throat after promising to have his six?_

_I’m not here because I want to be, Astra. I never wanted to be ruthless._

_I’m here because I have to be. What they did to you only confirms it—and I refuse to let them do that to Kara._

_Do what you want with this intel. Sell it to the highest bidder. Publish it online. Better yet, keep it safe, keep it under lock and key, and use it when the time is right. Give it to Cat Grant, your mediator, and see if she can keep these rogue powers in check. She already has sway with the Executive Office, and more leverage is never a bad thing. I don’t know if putting all of this out there will do any real damage (there’s even a marketing department, here), but I know that putting it in your hands, hands that have moved playing pieces before, and a mind practiced in strategy… well, you’ll be able to use it better than most._

_I want you to know that I look out for myself and the people I love. You’re one of those people, whether you believe it or not. For the longest time, I believed it was Kara, and only Kara, safety for a sister that took me a while to love, took me some time to grow accustomed to. I promise, I'll fight fiercely for her. I fought fiercely for you, but I can't risk dismissal again. I have to keep my cards close to my chest, especially now. They’ll forgive me, if I say I met you, I loved you, I let my immature heart guide my actions instead of my more sensible head._

_But understand, I can’t give them up._

_I have to let them think I’m their perfect soldier, committed, just, honor-bound by duty, exactly what you would’ve wanted in the Kryptonian recruits, I guess. But on this side, I hold more power, and that’s the truth of it. I’ll know the instant it happens, if they move against Kara, and I will have an arsenal at my back and months of training under my belt—years and advancements and access to more confidential information, if I work hard. I can discover their secrets, stockpile my_ own _leverage while within their ranks should I ever need it to figure out how my father disappeared._

_And I think, even from here, even after everything, that I can protect you better. Roulette is gone, her operation dismantled. We’ve seized a portal that our engineers are tearing apart, trying to discover its power source, trying to figure out just what gives it life. We’ve found vats of chemicals and experimental weaponry, all designed to take down and control aliens. Roulette might have been running a fighting ring as a front, but her real deal? Moving aliens between worlds and between organizations._

_And you want to know what really sucks? We arrested her. We_ had _her, Astra, sitting in a cell in that stupid dress, until another person with a higher clearance came in and released her._

_Just… let her go. And we can’t keep the records of her partners or her patrons, because it could implicate independent military contractors—_

_Do you know how fucked up this is?_

_I’m sure you do; you lost your entire planet to bureaucrats with more authority. And this is what you felt like, probably. Helpless. Desperate to save your family. I'm sorry. I'm so, **so** sorry. I can’t say I’m sorry enough. I can only write you my truth, and hope that I haven’t lied so much that you'll never trust me again._

_The long and short of it: Roulette is gone, for now. Her fighting ring destroyed, for as long as the superior powers-that-be make her lie low. We’ve seized most of her research and are trying to track engineering signatures, but because it was all experimental, and most of all—illegal—there’s no company names on any of this. Not that we could file charges against them if we did. The system is bullshit, but staying in it is the only way to change it._

_At least you stopped the trafficking of bodies. You led us to the portal in Lord's labs, even if it was by accident._

_Despite your powers, you are not unconquerable, Astra. You are wise and competitive and strong and beautiful, but none of those things will save you from an enemy about which you know nothing. That’s what they taught us in basic. Well, that’s what they emphasized in basic. They gave us a manual of every known alien species that had walked the earth. Listed all known traits, physical and mental characteristics that counted as offense and defense. They told us to memorize it. Told us it would be the difference between life and death in the field. Kryptonians were in that manual, Astra._

_And that terrifies me._

_So, I’ll remain on the inside, no matter how screwed up it is. An agent, yes, but an agent under my own authority. You can't deny that there are vicious species out there who would sooner shove a spike through our temples than bargain for peace, and that's who I'm fighting against. These other aliens… the ones who aren’t looking to cause any trouble… the exploited, the refugees—they need a man on the inside._

_That’s me. I can do this, Astra. I know I can._

_You know, unfortunately better than most, that I’m more than capable of treachery. And if it ever comes down to it, I need to hold more power than those I would betray. I’ll make concessions in battle, but I will do everything in my power to win a war if it comes calling for my family. I think I’ve always been a soldier, but I’m no one’s to command. Not even yours._

_But soldiers, like generals, do fall in love, and I refuse to consider that a weakness. They can use Kara against me. They could use you against me, convince me that you’re a threat, that you’re untamable, that you are a militant hostile with lasers for eyes and unmatched strength and the removed coolness of an intergalactic militant._

_But I know better. Using you two… it would only make me fight all the harder._

_I like to think I’m not as emotional as I am. And I know it’s bullshit. You know it, too. And I know you’re just as susceptible to feeling as I am… perhaps even more so, now that you’ve lost so much. But I refuse to let them brainwash me. I’m no candidate for indoctrination, and I think that’s where my emotions help me more than hinder me. I can fight aliens who hurt me and protect aliens who love me, and I can do it while sticking to my guns—metaphorical, this time. I don’t know if this changed your mind, this last desperate attempt for me to explain myself. I doubt you even believe me._

_I don’t think I would, if I were in your shoes._

_If you’ve made it to the end of this letter without burning it, or scoffing at my high hopes, then maybe you do still feel something for me. Everything I’ve written here is true, and all of these records can be verified—that’s probably more important to you than the bits about me. And I’m okay with that, I guess. I’ve made my bed, but it’s not as comfortable as mattress shopping with you._

_I’m going to show you that I mean what I say. Or, more accurately, that I mean what I've written.  
_

_I’m going to show you that I trust you. No double crosses this time._

_~~Sincerely,~~ _

_~~Warm regards,~~ _

_No. Love. That’s all this has led to, hasn’t it?_

_Love,_

_Alex_

* * *

 

 

I took the files with me and flew headlong into a window on the 37th story of CatCo. At 7:45 a.m., I only startled two custodians and upended one cubical. Oh well. I was still a little drunk. Better to leave Cat to bark at her people to keep their heads down and not ask questions before I lost my resolve. I had miscalculated by two floors, finding one of those human deathtraps (elevators) and riding up three more floors to Cat’s spacious top office, lights already on, one of those huge printers buzzing to life with memos and news-clippings and whatever else National City’s media queen thought to print at 7:47 a.m.

I turned the corner and found her at her desk, only two monitors on behind her. She had her maroon, cat-eye glasses perched on the bridge of her nose, and another pair of glasses hanging from the vee of her blouse. Her blonde hair had soft rollers in it, pulled up around her face so that her head looked something like a purple mushroom with terrible eyesight. In my drunkenness, I found it funny. My laugh alerted her to my presence, which paused the lightning keystrokes. Soon enough she was Cat no more, but a thunderbolt, a windstream, streaking toward me in too-high heels with a blank face and curled fists.

I wondered if she would hit me.

But no… she embraced me.

“Thank god,” she said, pulling away, her French nails digging into my arms as I tried to focus on her, as I tried to remember why I’d had to come so quickly. There was something urgent she needed. Her mushroom head was purple and yellow—curlers lavender, hair like goldenrod—and fierce orange bloomed behind her on the monitors while white washed out everything else except for centerpieces in her office. The chevron pillows I’d seen last fall had been retired for pops of summer florals. Aqua, periwinkle, seafoam and raspberry—rainbow accents in a white room with a woman who slathered her magazines in bold type. Something about Cat Grant always radiated color, and I always like her for that.

“We thought they’d… wait, have you seen M’gann?” Cat asked quickly. “Is she alright? Her arm?”

Right. The tracker. Of course they’d kept in touch.

“She’s…okay.” I trailed behind Cat like a toddler, stumbling through the haze that hit me a lot harder now that time had passed; now that I'd done some clumsy barrel rolls straight through a window. Whatever wine I had tossed back right before leaving, it didn’t seem to catch up with me until I was locked in Cat’s tower.

“’m drunk.”

“Before 8 a.m.?” Cat asked, moving to her own wet bar. “I think I’ll join you.” She poured herself three whole fingers of her favored scotch and took up a spot beside me on the couch, studying me with a stare that had bought her empires.

I tried to shake it, but was instead met with the urge to vomit.

“Not on this rug, you don’t,” Cat clipped, standing, retreating, and then returning with a wastebasket lined with a trashbag. I suppressed the heave but kept the bin close to my chest, wondering when she would ask. Wondering if I could speak it _again_ , after having told it all once to M’gann.

“Shall I make it easier on you?” Cat asked.

“Please,” I said.

“They let us go four days ago. They’ve had you ever since. I’ve been forced to sign an NDA, and have had a web conference with Olivia—sorry, President Marsden. Apparently this organization is paramount to an upcoming bill that she is talking about presenting after the midterm elections, which means she needs a party shift to get it through. That's another sixteen months which is not great for her, because it means there’s not enough current popular support if it’s true that the reps in congress really reflect the will of the people—”

“That’s ‘cause the _people_ hate aliens,” I grumbled.

“Perhaps. Perhaps not,” Cat said, mumbling over the lip of the glass. “Public opinion is a fickle beast. It can be charmed, swayed. But when my hands are tied… Astra, I can’t publish when the president tells me its in violation of National Security.”

“Not according to your Constitution,” I quipped, surprised by my own bitterness. By my own bite. Cat was mimicking Alura. Deferring to a higher power for fear of… what? Panic? No, the circumstances didn’t warrant public panic. I was so tired of the politicians and the lawyers and the finesse and ineffective diplomacy it all hinged upon.

Generals knew tactics, yes, but we also knew the power of force.

“I’m not ready to sacrifice my gains and camp out in Russia awaiting extradition. I’ve got more mouths to feed than Ed Snowden could ever dream of,” Cat volleyed, taking a large swig after another appraisal of my rather pathetic person.

I must’ve looked terrible, bedraggled and drunk in my mismatched black outfit, hair tangled, clutching the waste basket to my chest, eyes haunted, loopy beyond sense.

“Yours isn’t the only story I’m telling, and I have to leverage your truth against federal mandates.”

“Leverage…” I murmured, blinking at the waste-basket before me. I held it tighter and felt the architectural integrity of the piece creak beneath my strength. Worse than super human. _Drunk_ super human. But it crinkled something else against my chest, something brown and crucial, the entire reason I came.

“I have leverage,” I said, letting the wastebasket fall out of my lap, gripping tightly to the side of the file. “But I don’t have the power to do with it what you can,” I said, passing it over to Cat, every file, every name, all the summary reports of operations completed, damages paid, cover stories concocted by complicit news outlets.

Cat removed the top file and began reading, skimming pages, taking in the weight of it. Funny how paper could be so damning. How patterned dots of ink could ruin the infrastructure that cost countries billions. Cat’s scotch shined in a clear, gold-rimmed glass. It was honey-brown, like one of the mugs back at the shop. Like the color of caramel drizzled overtop a machiatto. It was 7:59 a.m. The shop should’ve opened two hours ago, but that sad sign, _closed until further noticed_ , loomed over the door like a mark of plague.

Cat kept reading the files, but I’d kept Alex’s letter in my pocket. I’d read it and re-read it and tried to read it a third time, only to realize I was crying over it, not making sense of it, because I was drunk.

Again, what good was her confession now? She followed through and wanted me to understand, wanted me to be on her side… but how could I ever really know what her side was? She claimed she was independent and uninfluenced. The same woman who put a bullet in me was the one who stopped the hand from striking me. The same woman who cared for me in the sunbeds and nursed me back to health was the one who had banished me in the first place.

The same woman who professed love kept me from that which I love most.

Alex was too smart, the kind of intellect I found attractive. But I had played the game of spies and alliances in another life, and I wondered if I was up for it again…

I sighed, sinking back into Cat’s plush cushions.

I needed to stop lying to myself.

_Of course_ I could play the game again. I _liked_ the game, for some grossly masochistic reason I could not name. Had I not just done it voluntarily, for M’gann against Roulette, a greater cause? Had I not been doing it in some small way with the shop, trying my hand at finding Kara through subtler means? Had I not done it with Alex, creating an identity that was me, but wasn’t fully, someone to fall in love with?

Was that not exactly what attracted me to Alex in the first place?

The fact that she was so like me… so scarily similar… it was almost dangerous.

Dangerous, but thrilling.

If she trusted me like she claimed, and if I could relearn how to trust her, to give that vulnerable part of myself—

Vulnerability.

Alex had given it to me.

She’d revealed her long game. Had even taken it down, signed it, handed it over with file after incriminating file, currently being handled with care and caution by one Cat Grant. Alex must’ve worked through the night on it to get it to me so quickly…

But what if it was a plant? What if it was the DEO, manipulating Alex, forcing her to put these sweet words down on paper and to throw me off the trail? How could I know that Alex had not already been turned to their anti-alien sentiments? Her motives seemed true, _protect Kara_ , always _Kara_ , but I had been sacrificed for Kara once before, and it had made me over cautious, especially in regard to Alex.

How could I believe her when another hand moved her? She claimed in her letter that she would trust me. That she would display it in one final move. I suppose I had to wait for that. And in the meantime, hand these documents over to Cat.

“Is this real?” she asked, looking over the edge of the papers.

“The sender says there are names in there that can be verified,” I mumbled, trying to swallow the surge of bile trekking up my throat.

“Who’s your source?”

“Inside agent who claims no real loyalty to the organization.”

“Do you trust him?”

“Her… and no,” I answered, wondering if I ever could again. “But verifying some of those names and cover-ups could sway my judgment.”

“How did you come by this?”

“She felt guilty,” I said, because Alex had written as much. “About how the events after Lord’s party transpired.”

“Lord’s out,” Cat growled, shoving the papers back into the envelope and tossing it on the glass-topped table. It slid into a ceramic centerpiece holding a bouquet of pink peonies in place, pretty, fragrant, but the vase jittered precariously and the whiff of flowers induced another bout of nausea.

“Head between your legs,” Cat said, pushing me down and over her couch, rising to do something… a cool something, I discovered, when she pressed a glass full of ice against my cheek. I nodded my silent thanks.

“Lord doesn’t look any worse for wear, though,” she said, regaining the conversation. "Twitter saw him on some model's arm at a new cocktail bar downtown last night."

“Unsurprising. I wonder if she woke up strapped to a table."

"Let's certainly hope not," Cat grimaced.

"Roulette’s out, too,” I mumbled, shutting my eyes and moving the glass to my brow.

“How do you know?”

“That source I don’t trust…” I started, thinking, wondering why I believed some of her, but not all of her. “…maybe I trust her a little.”

“Absolutes make a journalist a lot happier,” Cat grumbled.

“Humans are too… _messy_ for absolutes.”

I thought of collegiate athletic directors who didn’t know the absolutes of right and wrong. Who were more loyal to shareholders than to women raped on campus.

No. Perhaps humans knew all about absolutes. Perhaps they just muddied the waters to make simple things look more complicated than they were, that way they could blame someone other than themselves when it all came to a head.

“I suppose I can take heart in that assessment. I returned to my office to find naught but chaos in my absence. Undoubtedly _messy_ ,” Cat huffed, pushing off the couch with her hands, returning to the mirror over her bar to pull down her rollers. “Missed calls, unanswered emails, memo upon memo sent out and even a missing persons report filed by one of the guys in IT. My secretary didn’t think my absence important enough to put on record.”

“It doesn’t seem like she used this time to prove herself,” I said.

“She proved her incompetence, that’s for sure. I fired her as soon as I set foot back in the building,” Cat griped. “Plus there’s other news: the Sinclairs went and liquidated most of their assets. Their mansions at Malibu have gone up on the market.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“Various Sinclair relatives spotted at chic apartments in foreign countries,” Cat said. “Stocks have dropped, so they're selling and running. And those new international headquarters? Located in countries that don’t have extradition agreements in place with the U.S., surprise, surprise. The paps caught them, of course. Camera-toting  vultures for the rich. They pick at us like we’re dead meat and wobbly flesh.”

“You told me one of the Sinclairs was on _Housewives of Opal City_ ,” I countered. “Wobbly flesh is the basis of a season’s worth of television, Cat.”

“How the hell do you know that?”

“Two of my workers at the shop are over-fond of this so-called ‘trash tv’,” I said, wondering about Jeremiah and Connie.

Were they still in the city? Exams had come and gone, they might have packed up their dorms and headed for home. “It seems that the public is more interested in celebrities and their real estate acquisitions and cosmetic surgeries than with the questionable practices of their militaries.”

“You are preaching to an unmoved and world-weary choir, my dear,” Cat said, another swallow of scotch traveling down her slim throat. I thought of the soldiers who worked for the DEO, their strength, their training. They could have very easily snapped Cat’s neck, assuming her to be a humanoid.

“And while the masses educate themselves on the lives of divorcees having bad phone sex, we’re on the verge of a natural disaster if that forest fire escalates,” Cat gestured toward the monitor of orange flame and black smoke behind her. “I’ve lost my assistant, I have to soothe the paps’s meltdown over my absence, keep an eye on coverage of Max Lord, plus my inland stations… and on top of all of that, I’m now privy to a secret organization’s most organized secrets,” Cat slumped into her chair, scotch glass in hand, one pair of glasses cast aside before she reached for the other ones discarded by her keyboard. “And I think the worst part is I don’t know how to help my friends,” she whispered, staring down at her shaking fingers.

“Maybe it’s not your place to do so,” I said, thinking back to the tracker and the blood spatters on M’gann’s kitchen table. Maybe this was an alien war that needed fighting, and a truce with the humans, no matter how powerful the human, might not work out the way we hoped. "Send me copies of those files, and let me know if--or when, you plan to use them. I'll do the same."

“Did they torture you?” Cat looked up, a little lost, her small frame suddenly smaller than she’d ever been. The chair didn’t fit her and her curls hadn’t yet relaxed into softened style. Her skull looked too small and her green eyes hollow, like she still remembered the glare of the poison light in that cell, even if it didn’t effect her directly.

“Yes,” I said, knowing that she’d sniff out a lie sooner than some of my spies in the Brigadier’s Guard. Her grip on her scotch tightened infinitesimally, just as her jaw clenched. It was barely noticeable; control from years in a boardroom, I presumed, but that quiet fury was fed by greater purpose. Righteousness could cast a deadly blow.

“I want them dead.”

“No you don’t, Cat.”

“I cannot let this stand,” Cat argued from her perch behind the computer. “I might not fight with the same weapons you do, but I do fight—this isn’t _right_ , Astra.”

“You don’t even know who ‘they’ are, Cat.”

“I’ll find out. I’ll make it happen.”

“Too much time, and there will be other battles that need your attention,” I told her, nodding behind her. “Why aren’t there more screens on?”

“Because my stations are the only two channels covering it,” Cat said. “They’re not cross-referencing with the wind patterns that the Weather Channel is predicting—”

“I think I would’ve recruited you to my Army, if given the chance,” I interrupted her, smirking, standing to return her wastebasket to its rightful position.

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Cat said, eyes on my clumsy movement. “Would you like to sleep it off on my balcony?”

“No… I need… I need to get back home.”

“The files?”

“Yours to keep, just get me copies. You’ve got a safe somewhere here, I assume?”

“Of course.”

“And the discretion to use those for a higher purpose, one would hope.”

“A lot of trust you’re putting in a human, General,” Cat quipped from behind her desk. She’d already placed one pair of her glasses back on her face and kicked her heels off, settling in for another round of email-answering.

“Trust that was well-earned, Media Queen,” I said, dipping out and doing my best to avoid swaying into her glass walls.

 

* * *

 

 

Now that I’d seen M’gann and Cat with my own eyes, there were four others I needed to check on. M’gann and Cat were not well, not by normal standards, and I assumed as much or worse for the kids…

_My_ kids.

Back to the closed shop and I knew I was too drunk to do everything that needed doing. Even if I wasn’t still physically injured, my heart hurt, and the burden of disappointment would not lift, not in my stupor. So upstairs I flew to my little apartment. To sleep it off, as Cat said. My four horseman would have to wait until I could show myself.

I popped the frame of a screen and climbed in through the back alley window. Lights were out, and the cereal bowl I’d left in the sink to soak had a slimy film of sugar water pooled within it. I turned on the ceiling fan to clear out the musty smell. I stripped out of the DEO clothes and headed for the shower, turned the water up as hot as it would go and watched the steam rise around me. The temperatures never scalded my skin, though they would have if I were human. I ran bar soap over my body and poked at my right breast… not even a scar. My hand lingered there and I thought of Alex, I thought of her loyalties, I thought of her betrayals. I thought about how desperately I wanted to believe her. I thought about how desperately I still _wanted_ her, thinking of all the times love have failed me in the past.

Too many memories. Too many pieces to fit together. Too many factors with no formula, but all I could see was Alex, slumped over her homework at the bar downstairs, her pencil scratching out notes and those beautifully symmetric numbers, smudged in lead against her cheek.

Yes, I cried.

I cried a lot.

I cried for M’gann’s arm, and Cat’s rage, and Kara’s ignorance. I cried for the injustice perpetuated by the human’s rigged systems. I cried for all of my workers and I cried for me and my losses, I cried because it _hurt_. I cried and put a fist through the wall and noticed a pain in my arm, high along the bicep but I knew it was just tension. I knew it was only a phantom hurt.

(It wasn't really. It was a trick. Alex would save me from it. She would save me, again and again).

Somehow, I made it to my bed. I hated it and I loved it, because I had dreams of sharing it with Alex and not once did I ever get to hold her in it. I suppose our bliss in the store those many months ago didn’t count. I fell asleep in a puddle of tears and dampened curls, dreaming of red deserts and serrated green blades… haunted by systems beyond my control.

 

* * *

 

 

Leah cried. So did Han.

Jeremiah wanted to punch something, but I’d never seen anyone make a worse fist than him. Connie just sat back with her arms crossed, quiet, waiting for further explanation.

I’d called them in from the shop phone and everyone of them had answered instantly. Jeremiah and Connie both caught the train back into the city, but Leah had held out on flying back to Colorado, and Han was still on campus for summer school. But they all made it in looking worried, bags under their eyes, and at that time I knew they deserved nothing more than the truth.

Or, as much of it as I could give without it bringing them harm.

“So…” I began uncertainly, swishing the contents of my iced-coffee before me, wondering vaguely if the electric bills would spike like they did last year during the summer months. Wondering, vaguely, if I’d still have the option of _paying_ an electric bill, if at some point a black ops crew came in and confiscated my person from the premises.

“First, I’m sorry I worried you,” I said, looking at each worker in turn. They sat in mismatched clothing with serious faces, more serious than college students in summer had any right to be. “I’m sorry you got dragged into any of this, and I apologize for not alerting you sooner.”

“Who hurt you?” Han first. The one with the crush. He wasn’t violent, but he was certainly no soldier. “Where did they take you?”

“Allow me to… to give some context, first,” I asked them. “Do you have anywhere to be? This could take some time.”

“We want to be right here, with you,” Connie said, gripping her mug tightly in both hands. “Assuming you trust us enough to let us in on whatever the hell’s been going on.”

“Ah,” I commented, tracing condensated drops along my cup. “Trust is a very dangerous thing.”

“Context, then,” Connie demanded, sitting back and crossing her arms, pinning me with her dark brown stare. For all four-foot eleven of her, she cut quite the menacing little figure. “Go.”

And so I did.

I’m an alien, I said.

No shit, Jeremiah replied.

I smiled at that, and it became easier.

No, you don’t understand, I’m not _just_ an alien. I’m Kryptonian. You don’t know what that means, but you know what that golden _S_ means. You know what blue suits and red capes mean to this country, to this _world_ , and the implications of power like his. Or do you? Have you seen enough of the world to know the corrupting effects of power? Jeremiah, you won your student election, did you not?

Good, I’m glad. But with that power comes investments from other powers. Who pulls your strings Jeremiah, even in student government? Do you speak for the students? What about the students who disagree with you? Do you negotiate with the administration? The faculty? How do you balance all of those relationships? Aren’t there times when certain sacrifices have to be made, when not everyone who put you in this position will be happy with the decisions you make?

And what does this have to do with a Media Queen, or a shooting at a coffee shop, or a barista disappearance?

I’m an alien. And there are more of us. Not all like me. Not all good.

And there are humans. There are more of you. Not all like you. And not all good.

There are stakes and there are risks and there are investments to be made in power. And I tried to keep my head down for as long as I could, but I couldn’t stand by and see my friends hurt. I couldn’t do nothing while others suffered. And it made me an enemy of people in high places. It made me an enemy of bad people with power. And through it all I tried to keep my commitments separated, this little life I’ve built with you, with this shop and that university, with its students… but soon enough the overlaps came, and relationships that I’d once kept in neat little columns bled into one another, quite literally, until this past weekend. It culminated in something like a final battle, a forcible seizure—no, I wouldn’t call it a kidnapping, I think it was necessary at the time—but suffice to say there are people out there who know about me and what I am. They know the power I hold and what I’m capable of. And they know that this place is mine, and you work here, and because of that, you could be in danger.

Do you understand that?

I won’t blame you if you leave.

I started this little life to find someone, another alien, a relation, and I've failed to do so. I've followed leads, I know she's a student. But I got sidetracked. Pulled into a larger game. For all I know, she's gone, and I've done nothing but put more people that I hold dear in danger.

“So let me get this straight,” Leah said, once I’d finished a very long, very detailed story. “You’re like Superman?”

“Yes. No. I don’t have his entitlement,” I couldn’t help the insult, knowing now that an organization operated in the shadows and likely had contact with Kal-El, and he didn’t think to give me fair warning. Of course, he never told me of Kara’s whereabouts either, so I didn’t expect much from him.

“Prove it,” Connie muttered.

“…prove it?”

“Well, yeah,” Connie said. “That’s a… I mean, that’s one hell of a story. We knew you were, uh, _different_ , but we didn’t want to make a big thing of it. Not when the pay was that good. And honestly, you’re the best manager I’ve ever had, so… if you want us to walk, show us what we’re up against.”

“I don’t want you to ‘walk’,” I insisted, trying to clarify. “I want to make you aware that this job is no longer stable. I don’t know how long I’ll be here. I don’t know… I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep up with this place if they know where I am.”

“So fight back,” Jeremiah said. “Didn’t you just say you were like, a soldier or something? Be like Superman and fight them.”

“In the eyes of your public, I would be fighting the ‘good guys’,” I lamented. “And I’m a little more than a soldier.” I couldn’t help it. My pride hurt with the comparison to Kal-El, a child who knew nothing of his home planet.

“What are you, then?” Leah asked, looking curiously at me.

Well then, I guessed the charade was up. I removed the well-worn beanie. I took off my glasses, and in a flash, I’d darted upstairs for a quick change into my uniform and had returned, rattling their mugs from the speed of my departure. I blew freezing breath against Leah’s sloshy frappuccino to solidify the mixture, then shot a laser beam with my vision at a steam pot on the espresso machine. It cartwheeled into the air and I flew to retrieve it. I set it down atop the table and resumed my battle stance before their gaping jaws.

“My name is General Astra In-Ze, first daughter of the House of Ze, Arclominian of the First Order and Brigadier General of the Soldiers of the Bastion Range. I am the Revitalist of Streld and the Liberator of Yygdern IV, First Class Graduate of the Argos Officer’s Academy, and Scourge of the Daxamite Rebellions. I have led hundreds of thousands of troops to war and have seen planets overrun by famine and want. I have orchestrated tactical maneuvers to siege cities, to cut off supply lines, to untangle ciphers and to plant false leads. I have lived a treacherous and duplicitous existence, and now I seek refuge on a planet that wants to curtail that power, _my_ power, because they do not understand me. And that which they do not understand, they seek to control.”

“Holy _fuck_ ,” Jeremiah said.

“…and now you sell cappuccinos?” Connie mumbled, gazing up at me in awe.

“Yes,” I responded, nodding somewhat absently. Listing all of the titles (and leaving some out) made it seem like I was bragging. I wasn’t. I wanted them to know that I was a target, and that basic association with me likely made them targets as well.

“That’s… that’s…” Leah started, taking a deep breath.

Intimidating? Terrible? Scary? Unforgiveable?

I heard the worst and had steeled myself for the likelihood of their departures; one more loss in all of this dirty business would not come as a shock to me.

“…that’s so _bad ass_ , Ashley!” Leah squealed, clapping her hands together and standing from the table with a jolt.

“Astra,” Han corrected her, standing as well. “Her name is General Astra.”

“General Astra,” Leah repeated, eyes shining with interest. “You took out Blake last semester. I mean, we all suspected, but we didn't _know_ know.”

I nodded carefully, somewhat confused by her reaction. She hurdled past the chairs and came over to hug me, to wrap her arms around me, and so I placed a careful hand to her back.

“I’m not leaving,” Leah said. “Not after what you did for me.”

“Me neither,” Connie said, standing herself. “With those credentials, we put a plan in place. We find a way for you to stay here, some place comfortable, for as long as you can. And if they come for you, we fight back.”

“There’s four of you,” I protested.

“And one super—lady!” Han argued back.

“While I appreciate the vote of confidence, I think you underestimate what I’m up against.”

“Then we plan,” Jeremiah said. “We plan enough that you’re able to stick around, keep making money, keep the shop open, just… lay low, I guess, so they don’t think you’re going to run or, I don’t know… maybe you find your niece without drawing any attention to her.”

“Maybe I shut everything down and cut my losses,” I said, dipping my gaze down to the table.

“Ashley… no, Astra,” Connie said, reaching out for my hand. “Are you forgetting what you are? A general?! We might be a small army, but all we’ve got to fight is the morning rush. So we hire one more person to trade in for shifts in case you need to bolt. I’ve got the books down, Jeremiah’s on the marketing… you don’t have to close up the whole place if you need to make a run for it. You can at least keep some local contacts!”

“Plus, _we_ have contacts,” Han insisted. “My family, in China. If you needed a safe house for a little while.”

“I’ve got links in Colorado and Canada,” Leah chimed in.

“Puerto Rico,” Connie added.

“Calie born-and-bred, but with my connections to professors, I’ve got an in at some partner universities in Europe,” Jeremiah, this time.

“Between all of us, surely we could hide you, correspond through something they can’t track,” Leah said, brain whirring about in that kinetic way she did when she tried calculus in her head. “And Astra, it might not be much, might even be more trouble than it’s worth, but you built this. It’s your home. And no one has the right to take it away from you.”

“We’ll defend it,” Han promised, standing, hands shoved deeply into his pockets. “The best we can.”

“Everyone, please, I… I can’t…”

“Can’t what, Astra?” Jeremiah asked, staring me down, looking for all the world like a young recruit, full of belief, full of the kind of passion that might fuel a long and illustrious career (full of the same kind of passion that could just as easily get him killed). “We’ve made our own alliances. We’re baristas but, uh… we’ll try to be soldiers, too.”

“That’s not what I wanted for any of you,” I argued.

“But that’s what college is about, you know?” Connie said. “Figuring ourselves out. What we stand for. How we want to make a difference. I’m tired of the way people in this country treat immigrants, Astra. Puerta Rico is a U.S. Territory, for God’s sake, and they _still_ call me a foreigner.”

“The paperwork for student visas is a nightmare,” Han agreed, nodding sagely.

“I can’t imagine it was easy for you either, Astra,” Leah said, nodding between her colleagues. “And it’s not fair for them to take away everything you’ve built with one fell swoop. It’s might be legal to them, but it’s not _right_.”

I stood, silent, in the middle of a ring of college students who had more conviction than admirals and colonels who’d seen 50 years in the field. Perhaps it was blind conviction, not yet tempered by experience, but I loved them for it all the same. And how could I argue with four stubborn undergrads looking for battles to fight, the world at their feet, fueled by idealism and too much caffeine? I acquiesced, because their plan wasn’t _bad_. It was just… complex. No less complex than registering a small business without a social security number, or applying to a university without medical records. It was a way for me to keep tabs on National City should I ever be forced out, because, at the end of it all. This is where I’d put down roots. It’s where Alex was. It’s where M’gann and Cat stayed. It was where, above all else, _Kara_ lived, and I still had hopes, dim as they seemed in that instant, of finding her.

Hope is a curious thing.

For Kara, I didn’t have too hope much longer.

 

* * *

 

 

So we planned. We acted. We reopened the coffee shop and put a hiring sign in the window, though qualified candidates were a little bit more difficult to come by in the summer season. We roped M’gann in as well. Made sure there were multiple contacts, multiple safe houses. We had the help and expertise of a media queen with a condo in Metropolis and a time share in Big Sur, a cabin in Aspen. Altogether, there were fifteen different safe houses in nine different countries, on four continents. Not bad for a rag-tag team whose main mission was coffee distribution.

I taught my baristas how to beat lie detector tests. I taught them Kryptonian ciphers. I told them of the spy beacon, our signal for trouble if men in black came banging down the doors. I told them it might not happen soon. I told them it might never happen at all. Those powers might just want to keep tabs on me, keep me within a five block radius of the university so I couldn’t cause any trouble. In the three or four days that followed, I re-opened the shop and we returned to normal routine, aside from our plans concocted after hours. I groomed my army, small as it was. I _trained_ them.

Turns our I was planning for the wrong kind of ambush.

On the fifth day of my return, I had reviewed exit procedures with Leah while on break. I told her about the compartment under the grate in the middle of the floor (the place used to be a garage, and mechanics needed a pit from which to reach the car chassis) where she could take refuge in the event of a search. Jeremiah had already interviewed a promising candidate to add to our little group, one who we discovered harbored pro-alien sympathies from a quick Facebook search. Alisha had worked in a café before in her hometown, and was due to start second summer term classes in July. After a quick interview and a rotation on the espresso machine, we made our hire. All seemed to be going according to plan. I was able to compartmentalize enough of our preparations and keep them separate from my daily tasks in the shop that I never saw it coming, didn’t even recognize it when it _did_ come.

I was on the machine at 10:45 a.m. before the lunch rush, pouring microfoam into the basic leaf pattern that gave a regular latte that little extra _oomph_ for the customers.

I overheard someone inquiring about the position with Leah at the register.

“Oh, I’m sorry, but we just made our hire yesterday,” Leah said sincerely. “We sorta forgot to take the sign down.”

“Oh, that’s no problem at all.”

A girl. Twenty-something. Glasses. Low-ponytail. Blonde.

Unremarkable, I thought, keeping my focus on the latte in front of me. I wiped the lip of the mug with a wet rag so nothing dripped over, and barked “Jennifer!” over the counter. I passed off the latte to the girl propped against the couch cushions in the back of the shop. Her earbuds were blasting some punk rock selection against her chest, since she’d removed them and draped the wires over her shirt to be able to hear her name called. Then our own Spotify list was blaring, Leah was taking an order, and I was running both the blender and the espresso machine at the same time. It was that auditory overload that I’d learned to enjoy, but that I had to be increasingly careful about nowadays.

What about heavy boots on concrete? Safety pins locked in place on semi-automatic weapons? Glowing green blades loosed from metal sheaths?

All the noise, all the waves—it’s why I missed the order. Why I missed the _name_.

“Might as well place an order while I’m here,” pony-tail girl said. “My sister loves this place, actually told me to come down because she saw the sign in the window.”

“Who’s your sister?” Leah asked. “We know all the regula—”

I flicked the blender on and only caught a little more of the conversation, too focused on street sounds beyond, just in case.

“—umpkin spice, do you?”

“Maybe, it’s out of season.”

“It’s my favorite.”

“Well, I think we—yeah, there’s the flavor,” Leah mumbled. “For here or take-away?”

“Better take it to-go. I’ve got to hit the pavement and see if I can find any other help wanted signs before everybody makes their summer hires.”

“So you were at UCNC?”

“Just graduated, looking for any gig I can get, at this point.”

“Funny, I haven’t seen you around.”

“Oh, I was in Communications and Marketing. What’s your major?”

“Mathematics,” Leah answered.

“Oh, I _love_ math.”

“You don’t hear that much from Comm-Mark majors.”

“Oh, uh, just… just cause I’m a nerd, I guess. Not that, not that math is _nerdy_ , oh, no, it’s really cool! I just meant, uh, I have a lot of different interests—”

“Listen, not a big deal,” Leah said.

Somewhere in that long conversation I’d poured up two salted-caramel fraps and had run another three shots for an ordered Americano. “Brendan, Jacob!” I yelled, finally completing the last of the orders on deck, turning back to Leah for the next.

“Pumpkin Spice latte for Carla,” Leah said, handing me the ticket. “I’ll bet Alisha’s great, but that girl seemed eager. I mean, if you get to a safe house and think about expanding in Europe, or something—”

“As if you lot aren’t enough to handle already,” I teased her, tossing a dish-towel in her face. She headed out on the floor during down-time to bus tables before the lunch crowd, grabbing the broom and dust pan from the side closet. I got started on the order, going through the motions, not really thinking about the oddity of it. I was rather preoccupied with getting my hands on enough spy beacons to pass around, thinking of taking M’gann out to Rozz for a recovery mission that evening.

But I didn’t.

Or course I didn’t go back out to Rozz.

I didn’t even make it to the end of my shift.

I sprinkled powdered cinnamon on the froth at the top of the drink before clapping a black lid on the cup. I’d do as I always had, point to the reusable to-go cups I had for sale for a whopping $6.50, hoping to decrease consumer waste.

“Pumpkin spice for Carla?” I called, twisting my head to look around the shop. “Carla!” I called again, raising my voice over the radio.

“Oh, oh that’s me!” pony-tail chucked her phone back in her bag and readjusted her glasses on her walk up. She slowed when she looked me over, then stopped, paralyzed, two feet from the counter. There was something uncanny about the shape of her jaw, the blue of her eyes, the gold of her hair under Rao’s light.

I’d seen her before, but not… really. A remove away. A memory. A photo, perhaps.

“It’s…” her eyes welled with tears behind black-frames that didn’t suit her. “M-Mother?”

No... it couldn’t be.

_I’m going to show you that I trust you_ , Alex had written.

_No double crosses this time._

I exhaled slowly, removing my glasses and smiling, trying to fight my own tears.

“Unfortunately, no,” I said, pulling my hair down, releasing the streak that set us apart. “But I think we must’ve gotten your name wrong on your order," I grinned through my own tears, reaching for her. "My apologies.”

“It’s okay, it’s—it’s more than okay!” she blubbered, reaching out for my hand across the counter. “It’s… you’re here, you’re really here—”

“Pumpkin spice for Kara?” I asked her, beaming, rubbing tears from her cheek with the pad of my thumb.

She nodded, and we both laughed, and I had to call Han in early to take the lunch shift.

My little one and I had a lot of catching up to do.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1/2 on Danvers reconciliations and rapidly coming to a close... but can we really trust Alex's motives? Tune in next week for more caffeinated drama :D
> 
> (And leave a comment if you so choose :P)


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's been 84 years... but i updated 
> 
> tw for crude surgical procedure with no anesthesia and science mumbo jumbo i made up

“Eleven… eleven _years_?” Kara gaped at me, cheeks flushed with delight, her face dimpled and her eyes squinting, wide with that same smile that grew every time I deboarded from the loading dock at the Military Guild’s outpost. Alura would bring her round when I returned from missions, and she would come running toward the landing and fling herself into my arms, her spy beacon glimmering in hand until I dug about for my own in my bag and touched it to its other half.

“Eleven years this summer, exactly,” I confirmed, settling back against the edge of the couch with my tea.

We’d retreated upstairs in a flurry of tears and _I can’t believe its!_ , caught up in our own surprise, our own elation, fumbling through fits and starts of narrative until our stories took shape; nothing linear, just interjections at moments when we shared something in common. Like the first time we burned an appliance with our stare, or the first time we crouched against the onslaught of sensation: visual, auditory, even _gravity_.

With Kara before me I could hardly control myself—I felt like floating, literally, metaphorically, at any second.

“That’s when I got here!” Kara exclaimed, reaching out to grasp my hands even though she’d just removed her arms from round my neck. She kept touching me, clinging to my fingers, as if at any moment I might disappear. “But it doesn’t make sense,” she said, shaking her head minutely. “We can’t have arrived at the same time unless Fort Rozz somehow… somehow…”

The realization turned what should have been a very happy reunion quite bleak.

“It’s here, isn’t it?” Kara asked, fiddling uncertainly with the handle of her own mug. “When I came through… with all of those prisoners—”

“Unfortunately, yes,” I told her, removing a long golden strand of hair from her face, remembering the way Alura’s curls would cyclone about her head as she rushed about to prepare herself in the mornings before instruction. “A crash landing… many years ago, and in the desert, thankfully. The prisoners scattered, they—I could not tell you what has become of them.”

“But… I don’t understand. You were— _I_ was—trapped. The Phantom Zone—”

“Your pod, Kara,” I spoke measuredly, hoping that she might be able to piece together my suggestions for herself. “When you escaped, debris from the explosion must have redirected you toward the Prisoner’s Channel, and that’s how you found yourself in the Phantom Zone. The trajectories and initially programmed coordinates—”

“It still doesn’t explain how you arrived right after me,” she argued.

“Recall your elementary astrophysics lessons from the Hastion geographic sector,” I prompted, absently waving at the air before us. Once upon a time, we stood on Alura and Zor-El’s balcony together, gazing at star renderings from some of her learning tools. The flourish with my hand was habitual, instinctive, and yet no image appeared before us, no stars by which I might guide her.

“Forgive me,” I muttered, curling my fingers in and bringing my hand back down to my lap. “But I was not lucky enough to escape with our astroprojector.”

“It’s…uhm, it’s been a while…” Kara trailed off, uncertainty overwhelming her, and I wondered just how much of her knowledge she had lost.

She never quite made it to the middle years at Instruction, when the most rigorous of curriculum was reviewed, even for those who were low-born (low-born and, consequently, placed) in the lower tracks at Instruction. Darling Kara seemed _embarrassed_ , but that was not my intention. I placed my hand on her, near her cheek, twirling back another long, golden streak of hair that had tumbled out of her ponytail. Her hair was like a comet’s tail, streaking after her golden presence in such a dark, grim world.

_How could I have missed this?_

The expansion of her smile and the natural crinkle of her eyes; the growth of her stature and the acquisition of those unassuming black frames. I was never able to watch her grow into herself, never present to see how she chose her clothes or her hobbies or how she acquired her—frankly—rather appalling posture.

Didn’t she remember who she was? Didn’t she know that she was… _everything_?

“Kara,” I pressed, smiling despite myself. “Remember, if a vacuum eclipses both space and time, can power be generated from within a closed system with no atmosphere?”

“No,” Kara answered decidedly. “Power, thrust, and velocity must be actualized through a self-sustaining power source. One which can create it’s own false atmosphere.”

“Or?”

“Or be manifested externally, until residual power effects have been absorbed and redistributed by the components inhabiting a vacuum—a false gravity is created. Thus, the components gravitate toward one another.”

“So what other piece of self-sustaining power inhabited the Phantom Zone besides your pod?” I asked, leading her to the conclusion as I used to do on cool nights above Argo City, when we’d take to the balcony to study the cosmos together.

Kara would hold the holographic device in her tiny fingers, the gold grid displayed and thrumming between us. She would point to one coordinate on the star-map and we would find it in the night sky and, after the stories and lessons had concluded, she would record her findings for later study. If I had visited the stars of the night’s lesson, Kara placed a check mark there. If Kara wanted to go there upon her advanced Instruction graduation at sixteen amzeht, she would circle the place name.

“Fort Rozz,” Kara concluded sadly, staring up from beneath shining eyes but leaning warmly against my hand. I brushed my thumb over her cheek, remembering when I kissed her, and tucked her into bed with Alura on nights when I was home. I was struck suddenly, terribly, with the thought that she might be lost to me just as quickly as she came.

“It doesn’t matter now,” I reassured her. “I’m… I’ve built a life away from that place. As small as it seems, I—I needed something that was my own. And through it… I found you.”

Kara seemed concerned, warring with herself, unable to sustain the smile I’d wanted to see for over a decade.

“Kara,” I asked, leaning over my knees to be closer to her. She was huddled in on herself, her shoulders hunched and her hands wrapped round her sugary coffee, probably luke-warm by now. “Little One, what is it?”

“I just…” Kara’s blue eyes swam with tears. We’d each been crying off and on, joyfully, for nearly half an hour. But the weight of sudden revelation held no regulated course—I could not predict her feelings, nor could she know mine. I was at a loss as to what had upset her, and hoped, prayed to Rao, that it wasn’t me.

“Mother sent you to—to Rozz,” she finally articulated, peeking at me from the side. Again, her posture… she looked utterly _meek_ in my presence, nothing like the true heir to the mighty House of El. “You… you were found guilty of treason.”

“Indeed,” I said, setting my own mug aside. I brought a leg underneath me and straightened, turning on the couch to face her more fully. “I will assume that in the year that I was away, between the time when—when I was sentenced, and when Krypton… when Krypton exploded, you were not given any context for my arrest?”

“My friends at Instruction said you had gone insane in the deserts of Streld,” Kara whispered, quickly setting her own mug aside and then lacing her fingers together. She gripped her owns hands so tightly, I wondered when she was last able to hold something, to _squeeze_ through a bit of the pain, without it crumbling beneath her. “I remember that mission,” another whisper. “You were… you weren’t yourself, thinking back on it now. But that was several amzhet before your—before the incident at the High Council Hall. You were just… sad.”

“I was,” I answered her, leaning back against the cushions. “And I can tell you why, Kara. You are more than old enough to understand, but we should address my arrest, first. Your peers were incorrect, believing insanity had gotten the better of me. I assume… I assume your mother never spoke of me again, did she?”

“No,” Kara answered gravely. “Not to me. But I would hear her crying sometimes, looking at the holograms of you two, together. She cried so much more after she sent you away—”

“Well, she knew the truth, then.”

“What truth was that?”

“That Krypton was dying,” I said, staring down at the mug I had discarded, wondering if I might see the pools of Kryptonian countryside in the ripples of the dark liquid. There were no agrarians moving their lurching harvesters on the hillsides, no young Kryptonians from the provinces grasping tools in their tradesmen apprenticeships, dreaming of larger life in Argo City, in the Craftsman’s Guild. Kara had not once visited the provinces, had never seen the lakes of fish grown to sustain the population of the metropolises, nor the fields nurtured by agrarian and horticulturalist alike, to promote off-world plant growth in an environment of rapid decay. We poisoned our land in the name of advancement, and Kara—not _once_ —ever saw her planet healthy.

“We both knew. We knew, with enough time to form a plan to save our people, if not our world. I knew three or four amzhet in advance of its demise, and I had told Alura. Alura was… she was _bound_ , for lack of a better word, by her position. Diplomacy was paramount, lest she incite public hysteria. Even if the council had issued a statement—”

“Wait, they—they _knew_?” Kara gaped, her jaw working against words that wouldn’t form, against years of misconceptions about her leadership, her _mother_ , her entire worldview. “They knew Krypton was… wasn’t sustainable and they just let it—they just let the people—”

“But what more could they have done, Kara?” I prodded gently, reaching out to touch her shoulder. She flinched away, and stood abruptly, confused tears turned heated, angry, _wrathful_. “It has taken years for me to come to terms with what our leaders did, but I do understand the other side of it now, I suppose. The expense of rescue, and even if implemented, who was to make the call about who departed, and who stayed. The ethical implications—”

“That’s not—that’s not what mother told me—”

“Better for you to believe your aunt the villain than an entire government of naysayers,” I supplied, wondering if that had truly been Alura’s thinking.

I could not say what had gone on in the mind of my sister. She had promised me, on the day of my sentencing, that she would fight my battle, that she _believed_ me. The naïve portion of me believed she might just convince the council to act in the best interests of the people. But I recall the scraggly humans on street corners, cardboard signs and Magic Marker scrawl, hollering ridiculously to passersby that _The End is Near!_ Non knew, just as I did, and I aided his efforts that led to loss of life. I understood my sentencing, I understood the implications of my accusations against the council, and I understood the fragile reputations of politicians. I understood, so much better than Kara, that Alura’s hands were tied, no matter if she truly believed me or not. Somehow, I was still living, and my sister was dead.

Alura… Alura was dead.

“They could’ve—they could’ve done _something_!” Kara shouted, tears flowing freely. “Mother, she… she lied to me, Astra, she lied about _everything!_ ”

“No,” I shook my head, thinking of sweet Alura, of the better half of me, of a lifetime spent by her side. “Alura was not a saint, but she wouldn’t have let that knowledge stand without doing something. How could she tell you, Kara? You were so young, and she was so vulnerable. Her power, what little she possessed, as just one member of a large council… don’t you see how she _had_ to sentence me?”

Didn’t I see it, even now, a decade and several billion deaths away? Had she saved us both in her own twisted, desperate way? “She couldn’t tell you the truth, dear one, and risk losing her foothold in the council. She knew, just as Lara and Jor-El did… it’s why she sent you here.”

I stood and went to her, gathering her up in my arms as she buried her head in my shoulder, shaking from her rage. She cried, collapsing against me, and held on.

She held on tight.

“Your mother was not perfect,” I soothed her, patting gently against her shoulders. Her hands clung to my back, shoulders shaking in anguish. “And I—I am the last person to judge what perfection might look like. And it has taken years—so many _years_ , Kara—for me to see the gift she gave us.”

“G-G-Gift?” Kara’s tears poured faster and her hitching breaths rattled violently.

Had she ever broken down like this?

If she had, what had contained her?

Certainly no other Kryptonian body—she was clinging to me with such strength that had I been human, she would have snapped my spine. She mourned the loss of who she thought Alura to be, mourned her ignorance, mourned her planet. Perhaps even mourned for the bad blood and years lost between us, between myself and her mother.

She gasped, twisting away from me to swipe inelegantly at her tears, her red face blotchy and streaked with moisture. She looked seven amzeht once again, returning home with a bruised knee and a guilty conscience, for leaping over the gutters she was prohibited from playing on. But she always came to me, because I would clean her wounds, and dry her tears, and I would not reveal her error to Alura. I had always kept this child from harm, and I would not stop now, even with Alura’s memory between us.

“We are alive, and we are together,” I said, as gently as I could. I held her gorgeous face in my hands and caught her tears on my knuckles, smiling through my own sadness. “Together at last, Kara. I cannot say if this was the work of your mother, but her actions—they led to this strange, melancholy reunion. I miss her and I love her and even now, I can no longer harbor hate in my heart, because she brought you into this world, and she saved you. You have the heart of a hero, Kara, and your mother—she just wanted you to have your chance.”

In Kara’s eyes, I saw the slightest wink of Alura looking back at me. Perhaps it was my own reflection, my own desire to recall the best of what my sister was manifested in the gleam of her tears… but I saw her. Staring back through another face, on another planet, and several years past; but it was there—forgiveness and acceptance and understanding transmuted into the uncertain woman who stood, shuddering in my embrace.

“I am only grateful I have the chance to witness what you will become,” I whispered to her.

“I…” Kara brought her hands up and pressed them against my own, dipped her head down to sniff and steady her breathing, unable to reconcile the host of emotions whirling through her head so quickly, so sporadically. “I miss her so _much_ , Astra.”

“Oh, Kara.”

She huddled back against me and sobbed so hard her body quaked. She shook and vibrated and shouted her despair into my neck, rattling the window frames and the cups of coffee on the end tables.

Round two, or so it would seem.

Had she _ever_ wept like this, uninhibited, against someone who could properly hold her?

I refused to think about the loneliness of her existence. I was so fortunate, for I had found M’gann to spar with, and to fly with, and to break down in front of. Who had Kara had in her life? Scientists, perhaps, and even Alex to do her best, but no one… no one who could bear the same great weight that Kara’s physical exceptionalism had forced upon her.

Kal-El? She made no mention of him.

There was no one, then, no one who could physically carry all of Kara’s inundating sorrow. Her existence, so cut-off from everything she had once known—it made her so susceptible to alien attachment. As constant as Alex might have been for her, Alex could never shoulder this. She could never have Kara’s arms around her, holding on as tightly as she wanted, without sustaining injury. Kara was… Kara was hurting, and she needed someone to hold her. Thank Rao I found her first—I can only imagine her dependence if she met another outsider. Some alien, perhaps from Rozz, perhaps some refugee, who… who might take advantage of her. She would gravitate to them simply for their status as Other, not because they were good for her.

Perhaps she could find camaraderie like I found, with M’gann. I wanted only the best for her.

“It’s okay, darling,” I murmured against her ear, taking on the load of her shaking sobs, absorbing the force and intensity of her loss. “I miss her, too. I miss Krypton, I’ve _missed you_.”

She continued to cry her catharsis against me, and I joined her, sobbing and fearful of what might happen next. It wasn’t until an hour later, when we had both gotten a handle on ourselves, that I suggested we venture out for lunch. I felt weak from the emotional exhaustion, and my muscles ached from clutching at Kara with such strength.

Thankfully, Kara was hungrier than I.

 

* * *

 

 

“… and had the chance to go to Amsterdam, my senior year in high school—that’s like your final amzeht during Instruction—”

“I’ve been here for ten years as well, Kara. I’ve seen an episode or two of _Modern Family._ ”

“Oh, oh right, sorry,” Kara said, propping herself against the concrete siding outside of the engineering hall. Campus was relatively empty in the middle of a summer afternoon. The traffic sounds scuttled round the corners of buildings, reminding me that we were still in National City, on Earth and far from Krypton, even though we were together. Kara and I had departed the shop to speak at length about her history, her life, and her new family on earth.

We ended up near a food truck that served monstrous grilled cheeses of varying specialties—Kara ate four with cheddar, bacon, and fried eggs, while I only had three, one with Swiss, tomato slices and kale, and two others with brie and green apples. It was astonishing, watching her new mannerisms, her exuberance, her utter joy as she veritably skipped around me, shoving bites of the sandwiches in her mouth as she retold her story from the beginning:

The crash-landing and Kal-El. The Danvers, and Midvale. Alex, Eliza, and Jeremiah—his disappearance, and the load Eliza had to shoulder. The contentious start between Alex and Kara. Middle school, high school, and the interesting problems encountered when maturing as an alien in a foreign land. The move to National City, college, one part-time job at Noonan’s, searching for another, or for something full-time. A boy from high-school, friends in college, Alex… Alex made recurring appearances in her best and darkest memories, so much so I coughed more than once on my sandwich.

“Are… are you okay?”

“Fine,” I insisted, reaching for my canteen full of water. I unscrewed the cap and took a long pull, guzzling through the heat in my cheeks and crumpling up the paper from the sandwiches. I tossed them in a nearby receptacle and Kara and I continued in silence, walking on. “Continue, please,” I told her.

“Well, uh, I went with my class, to Amsterdam, I mean, and since my sister was on break from college, she came, too—but even after Jeremiah died, Alex was there for me, one thousand percent, Aunt Astra,” Kara said. “She’s always looked after me.”

I held my tongue.

I was unsure of what I was allowed to say. Alex sent Kara to me, that much I had figured. But had it been done merely to wipe the slate clean?

Alex certainly didn’t want herself painted as a villain in Kara’s eyes, and after hearing Kara speak of her, neither did I. It was more than apparent that Alex had mastered the art of lying—Kara believed her driven, much ‘cooler’ than she was, stubborn to a degree, but she never once mentioned that her beloved sister had grappled with a drinking problem. Did Kara know about it? Did she know that it had nearly gotten Alex kicked out of grad school? Or was Kara merely painting Alex in the best light, so that I would like her found-family on Earth? She believed Alex was employed by a genetic engineering company, one that worked closely with the F.B.I., and possessed many federal and state-issued contracts.

She didn’t know her sister carried a gun.

Kara didn’t know her sister was just as dangerous as a Kryptonian.

“Could you—oh my god, you should come to dinner tomorrow night!”

I stopped in place on the sidewalk. “What?”

“Tomorrow, dinner, with me and Alex! She hardly ever gets a day off with her new company, but she managed to sneak away since it’s almost the weekend,” Kara said, her smile so wide and bright I hated to even hesitate.

But hesitate I did.

How couldn’t I?

Kara noticed, and her face fell abruptly.

“Oh, gosh, that’s—I’m so stupid. You… you probably have plans, you… you were _at work_ when I came in.”

“It’s nothing of the sort, Kara. That’s very kind of you to ask,” I amended quickly. “It is only, only… I… I just… didn’t expect all of this…” I trailed off, wondering what I could say, how I could explain my uncertainty. Whether I could tell her that I feared for her, knowing me now, with the DEO looking over my shoulder. Knowing me put her in danger, not just from the DEO, but from Maxwell Lord, if he ever fixated on me again, or from Roulette, once she came out of hiding. And then Alex, what was I going to do about Kara and Alex—

“If you’re nervous about meeting her, don’t be,” Kara said. “She… she might be my family now, but you’re my family, too. She’ll understand. And Eliza! You’re going to love Eliza. You can come back to Midvale with us at Christmas, and Alex, Alex gave me her apartment after her company got her the new—well, that doesn’t matter, but I was thinking of hosting Thanksgiving at my place if, I mean, I have to get a job first—”

“You were a communications major?” I asked, grasping onto the first detail that didn’t paralyze me.

“Communications and Journalism, yeah, with a minor in Design,” Kara said. “Along with about 3,000 other undergrads in National City, but… well, the math here is so easy.”

“I know,” I answered. “One of my professors called my most recent statistics analysis compiled for my ecological essay ‘hogwash’.”

“No!”

“He did,” I reassured her, smirking at her glee. “He obviously did not know to whom he was speaking.”

“Obviously,” Kara agreed, chuckling as she moved to embrace me. “I’m sorry,” she said, squeezing my shoulders tightly. “I just—I love hugging and I can really—”

“—embrace me,” I finished for her. “At full strength… I feel the same, little one.”

She pulled back and pushed her dark glasses up her nose, nodding genuinely.

“Kara,” I said, placing my hand on her cheek once again. It seems we both could not get enough of each other, resorting to a sort of tactile anchoring to ensure the other would not disappear. “You have grown so beautifully.”

Kara tucked her chin down.

“Aunt Astra…”

“No, truly,” I reassured her. “I am so proud of you, Kara, and your mother… your mother would have been so proud of the woman you’ve become. I’m certain of it.”

Kara smiled, fiddling with a chain wrapped round her neck, one that looked terribly familiar.

“You kept it?” I asked, pressing the tip of my finger against the insignia, remembering the day Alura came home from the merchant’s bazarr, a pin prepared for Zor-El and a necklace for herself. It was only a few weeks after the dance, after the marriage had been agreed upon. Alura was unlike me; I was prone to feeling, to _love_ quickly, but she knew the gravity of her match with Zor-El, and did love him, in her reserved, steadfast way. And so she commissioned that necklace, _Kara’s_ necklace, as a symbol of her commitment to Zor-El, and the family they would create together. Their commitment to Krypton and to each other was enviable, like Lara and Jor-El’s, too. I missed my friends, my family, and the remnants of our culture. Seeing the chain forged by a Kryptonian craftsman affected me more than I believed it would.

“I always have it,” she said, reaching back to undo the clasp. “Here,” she said, handing it over. “You should wear it.”

I shook my head. “It is yours. It is not my house, Kara.”

“But it was mother’s,” Kara said, taking my hand and uncurling my fingers, allowing the chain to pool in a puddle of shiny links. “I’ll want it back, but… maybe it will make you feel close to her, just for a while.”

“Thank you,” I said, taking the necklace and winding it round my neck. The pendant lay against my throat, and I could not tell if I felt closer to Alura. But seeing Kara’s reaction was worth it. “But back to my question, forgive me, I keep getting side-tracked—”

“It’s fine!” Kara insisted, shoving her hands into the back pockets of her colorful shorts. She looked very put-together for a summer day in her board shorts and button-up blouse, polka-dotted and figure-flattering. I recalled, before all of this, that she had been ‘hitting the pavement’… looking for a job.

“We’ve got a lot of ground to cover,” Kara admitted.

“Quite,” I agreed, looking down to Kara’s messenger bag. “You came in today—you said your sister pointed you toward our sign. You are seeking employment?”

“Yeah!” Kara said, moving so that we could sit at one of the benches near the campus amphitheater. “Yeah, I just graduated, so I’ll take anything I can get, at this point. I pull a lunch shift at Noonan’s—this restaurant downtown? So I either need another part-time or something full-time, a little more stable slinging appetizers, you know?”

“You have no… clear path you would like to take?”

“Not at the moment, unfortunately,” Kara sighed, slumping against the back of the bench. “It’s… sort of been drilled into me to _not_ draw attention to myself. Not to plan too far ahead, or, well, be too much of a stand-out in school. Jeremiah, and Eliza, and Alex, and Clark, even, they were always worried someone would notice me—”

“And you should be noticed,” I said, confused by her explanation. “You are exceptional.”

“Not in the, you’re-my-aunt-and-you-have-to-say-that, way,” Kara corrected me. “But in the…” Kara squinted and made a funny motion around her eyes.

I looked back, at a loss.

“You know,” she said again, tilting her head severely.

“I fear your non-verbal cues are one of the skills you are slightly less than exceptional in, Little One.”

“I’m talking about the powers, Aunt Astra!” Kara whispered.

“What about them? They help me immensely in my position.”

“You…” Kara’s jaw dropped, and her brow furrowed in confusion. “You _use_ your powers?”

“Kara, there are approximately 127 coffee houses in National City and the surrounding suburbs. Competition is immense for small businesses, but my powers have aided me in speed, production, and enhanced my business acumen. Of course I use them to my advantage,” I said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “They are a gift, Kara. Nothing to be ashamed of. I do not draw attention to having them; I have no intentions of shouting it from the roof-tops, as your cousin does. But after such loss, to make my life here a little easier? Yes, I use them.

“I fly high every morning and try to remember the views over Argo City, the rush of piloting one of the Nebula Beam X-50s from the flight deck. I use them, in my small service job, and I maintain a cover well enough. I think I know of a place you could use them to get ahead, if you so wished.”

“A place like—like a workplace?”

“You minored in Design… you have proofreading skills, a basic clerical background?”

“The reason I was gone all last semester during your… honestly, Astra, you running for student council is kinda hilarious—”

I huffed my disagreement. “Back to the point, Little One. You know Office Suite, correct? But what about MAC applications? Have you any design experience with various softwares? WordPress? Wix? SquareSpace? Social media management? I contracted some of that out when I began the shop, but what about your copy-editing and time management skills?”

Kara blinked at me momentarily, like she was having trouble processing the questions.

But then: “Well, I was trying to say, last semester I was out of school. Doing an externship at a marketing firm in RiverLane, a suburb on the north side of the city. So yeah, I did pretty much all of that stuff without, uhm, getting paid for it. I didn’t actually have to check in for classes except to turn in my final report. The commute was… not fun.”

“You should have flown.”

She stared at her flats, and nudged at a rock on the concrete with the toe of her shoe. “I haven’t flown… in years, Aunt Astra.”

“Perhaps something to look forward to, then, once you have your new commute,” I smiled.

“And what commute would that be?” she asked.

“Downtown. The bus routes are terribly full in the mornings, and getting to CatCo will be much easier if you fly.”

Kara’s eyes grew large as saucers, and her grip on the back of the bench grew so tight that she crushed the board in her grip.

“Oh, uhm… oops?” she grimaced, shaking the splintering bits of board away, torn between my offer and the mangled back of the bench. “I’m sorry I just…” she shook her head, eyes bugging comically. “CatCo?”

“I don’t believe there’s more than one corporate office. Aside from the London production studios—”

“No, I—I’m pretty sure it’s just the one,” Kara said, adjusting her glasses and gripping the edge of her skirt rather nervously. “You uhm… do you know which department it would be? I mean, I’d even work in the mail room to have that on my resume—”

“You’d be working with Cat,” I said.

“I’d… be working for Cat… _Cat Grant_?”

“No, you’d be working _with_ Cat Grant. Likely at all hours of the night, given what I’ve seen of her schedule,” I grumbled. “It’s not entirely healthy for a human to work as much as she does, but then again, you are not human.” I pressed against her nose, a ‘boop’ of affection Jeremiah frequently bestowed upon the other members of the shop that resulted in swats or hugs, depending on the mood. “She needs a personal assistant.”

“Personal assis—assistant…” Kara repeated, her jaw working open and shut and open again, no words springing forth. I was beginning to wonder if this was a good idea, sending her into the wolf’s den that was Cat’s office… but Cat was powerful, that’s why I’d given her the information about Roulette and the DEO in the first place. And if she knew of Kara’s identity, even if she made no mention of it while Kara worked for her—Cat could give her the tools she’d need to strengthen herself in the human’s professional world. Beyond that… Cat could _protect_ her.

“How did you—I mean, how could _I_ even work—Astra, are you saying you could get me an interview?”

“Of course. Do you have a mobile phone with you?”

“A cell? Yeah, I’ve got—hold on, just a sec!”

Kara rummaged in her messenger bag and pulled out a shiny, rose-gold smartphone with sunshine stickers on the back of it. Her hands were shaking when she handed it over.

“Oh, sorry, let me unlock it—”

I nearly choked looking down at the lock screen. It was a recent photo of Alex and Kara together, bundled up in oversized sweaters, Kara with a spoon hanging off her nose, Alex, holding a container of ice cream with smeared vanilla on her cheek, laughing, joyously, at her silly sister.

“Your sister,” I said, unable to stop myself.

“Yeah, that’s Alex.”

“She’s… beautiful,” I mumbled, quickly clearing my throat and navigating toward the number keypad.

“Oh, I—well yeah! Yeah, she’s gorgeous, she got her hair chopped off a few months back. Gosh, you should have seen it before, it was longer than mine. Very rock ‘n roll. She’s so much cooler than me.”

“I… guess I’m looking forward to dinner, then,” I said, wondering how I would get in contact with Alex again. We’d have to come to some sort of understanding of what we were going to do, orbiting around Kara as we were. Kara smiled up at me, and I smiled back, before quickly hitting the ‘call’ button.

Three rings, and it went straight to voice mail. Cat never answers numbers that she doesn’t recognize.

“Good afternoon, Cat. It’s Astra. Please call me back at this number within the next—” I glanced down at the clock on the phone, “—two hours or so, or I’ll just ring you from the shop. Thank you.”

I hung up, made sure the phone’s sounds were turned on, and gave it back to Kara.

“You know Cat Grant,” Kara said, star-struck and vibrating with excitement.

“Cat is my friend,” I said, and it felt nice to vocalize it.

“You—how did you—how do you even _know_ her?!?!”

“She came into the coffee shop one day,” Astra said. “That’s not typical, I believe her assistant usually gets her coffee, that will be your job, you know—”

“So then what? She just… asked you to hang out, or something?”

“No, we… uhm, that is…”

And so it began. What could I tell Kara, without putting her in more danger than she was already in? What lies could I tell her again, after she’d just broken down over the lies of her mother? Why did I have any right in creating a story to protect her, when I could hardly protect myself?

“Cat and I worked together on a project of hers. I’m not supposed to talk about it. And then, you might have read about it in the papers… there was an attempt on her life, right outside of my shop.”

“That was… oh Rao, Astra, didn’t her driver get killed?” Kara asked, scooting closer to me.

“Yes. It was… very unpleasant,” I confessed, thinking back to Alex’s face as she clambered over the seat, her hand clutching the carotid artery of a man bleeding to death, Cat lying on the pavement in the alleyway.

So long ago.

“I saved her. I used my powers, but she didn’t see.” Lie number three—or four?—of the afternoon. “No one… no one really knew, no one saw, not in all the chaos.” Lie number five. “A friendship just… developed from there.”

As if on cue, opening chords from the Jackson 5 started blaring from Kara’s phone. I looked down at the number, and answered Kitty.

“This had better be one of those disposable cell phones,” Cat snipped at me. “I know you don’t own one and I know you’re smarter than to leave this number in a complete stranger’s recents.”

“And hello to you, Cat,” I chuckled. “I’m actually calling from… from my niece’s phone.”

The line went silent for a moment, and then—

“Kara, right?”

“Yes.”

“You found her?”

“A few hours ago.”

“Congratulations. Something good out of all that pain, I suppose.”

“Indeed,” I agreed, thankful for Cat’s less-than-loquacious tendencies on the phone. “Believe it or not, she’s just graduated with a marketing degree, and seeking employment. I just knew of a friend who could use a personal assistant.”

The sigh over the phone was so labored I actually tasted the scotch she’d inevitably pour after concluding the call.

“Astra, _really_?” she muttered.

“She’s looking, you’re looking, do you not at least want to interview her?”

“Of course I want to interview her—”

“For the job, Cat.”

Another few moments of silence, and some muttering in the background. There was the telltale tinkle of glassware in the background of the call.

“10:15. My office, tomorrow morning. You know which floor.”

“Thank you, Cat. I think you’ll find her… very helpful.”

“I’m sure. Good afternoon, Astra.”

I hung up, and did have the good sense to go back and delete Cat’s private number from Kara’s phone history before returning the device to her.

“Tomorrow morning, 10:15,” I told her with a smile.

Kara took the phone back, tears once again glistening in her eyes, unable to fathom quite how quickly it all occurred.

“I… I don’t know what to say.”

“That’s probably not a good thing. Cat likes people with answers,” I commented.

“No, I mean—thank you, Aunt Astra. I… I check the CatCo postings almost every day, but I would’ve never gotten an interview with Cat—I mean, Mrs. Grant? _Ms._ Grant? I wouldn’t have gotten an interview with her even if I’d flown up to her balcony myself!”

“I seriously doubt that, you know she’s quite pro-alien.”

“I know! That’s why I just love her,” Kara replied dreamily.

I turned to her appraisingly, interested in her word choice.

“I mean, her company, I… I love the _Tribune_ , and her magazine, I—don’t have the physical subscription, but I do have access to her online library. The way she writes is just… she _believes_ in us, you know?”

“I very much know.”

“Do you think… well, would you help me with the interview?”

“Pardon?” I asked.

“Well, you know her. You know what I should and shouldn’t say.”

“You should be honest, Kara. As honest as you can be, given the circumstances.” Perhaps I included that caveat for my own selfish reasons. “Don’t train yourself to conform and be what you _think_ she wants. That’s the surest way to disappointment on both your ends.”

Kara rolled her eyes and let her head loll to the side, coming to rest on my shoulder.

“I should probably go back to my apartment and redo my resume. It’s really not that impressive.”

“Do you need to go now?”

“Soon,” she sighed, glancing back down at her phone. “It’s been almost five hours… you missed your shift, I guess.”

I turned and pressed a kiss to her golden hair and took her hand in mine, continuing to peer out over the empty quad.

“Can you stay, though? Just for a few more minutes?” she asked, squeezing my fingers.

I squeezed back, and put a hand over my heart, feeling Alura’s necklace press into the skin of my chest, feeling my family slowly coming back together.

“As long as you need me, Little One.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

It was hours before I got back to my apartment, and neither of us wanted to part. But part we did, reluctant on both sides. Kara’s cell phone number, Alex’s cell phone number, _Eliza’s_ cell phone number and a host of other addresses had all been hastily scrawled on the back of one of Kara’s resumes and folded up in my back pocket. Kara, like many others, was appalled to discover I did not have a personal phone.

(“Aunt Astra, you can’t just not have a phone. What if I need to get in touch with you? From everything you’ve told me, you can definitely afford it. We’re going to my provider this weekend and getting you linked up with the rest of the people on Earth.”)

So much for the ‘government-agency-already-knows-my-whereabouts’ defense. I was far more ‘linked up’ than Kara knew.

I climbed the stairs to my apartment feeling—well, I cannot quite pinpoint how I was feeling. The sun was just beginning to set and the shop was glowing from the late setting sun; everything was drowsy, slowing down for the evening, and we were open for only a few more hours to host any late-comers with bad caffeine habits.

I set about preparing some chicken, or maybe it was pasta; I don’t recall. Kara was back, and she knew I was alive, and I would see her again the following day. I would see her so soon I could hardly believe it. It was taking a surreal amount of effort not to fly across the city at that very instant, but she had insisted we depart so she could fully focus on preparing her resume prior to her interview with Cat. She had the daring to ask if I wanted to move into her apartment at some point in the afternoon, and I almost took her up on the offer. Truthfully, I never wanted to let her out of my sight again. But she was fine ( _she was fine_ ), and I had to keep telling myself to go about my evening; she had lived for eleven years without me, she could certainly do so for another evening. She said we would talk at dinner about anything major. Cell phone acquisition. Moving into another apartment. Her family. _Our_ family.

She was supposed to call the shop tomorrow during my shift (after her interview), just to let me know how it went. And I was supposed to meet up with her for afternoon coffee, and then return to her apartment around “7ish” for dinner. In between coffee and dinner, I had plans to grovel on my knees for Cat to take her on, should the situation call for it. And then, perhaps, I might be the one to tell her the good news of her hiring over the meal we would share together later that evening.

Dinner.

Dinner with Kara.

_And Alexandra,_ a pesky voice in the back of my mind murmured.

I almost put my head through the wall, but a knock at the door stopped me.

I turned away from my food preparation and glanced through the wood, seeing M’gann, and—

_Alex_.

Together.

I sped over and almost ripped the door off its hinges, unable to abide the terror I harbored at seeing them both on my doorstep.

“What is it?” I asked immediately. “Is it Roulette? The DEO? Is Cat okay—?”

“Everything’s fine, Astra,” Alex reassured me instantly.

“No, it’s not,” M’gann bit back at her. She eyed the black case Alex carried with revulsion, then scanned me quickly with a critical sort of softness that made my stomach flip. “This one turned up at my place looking for some Mar— _alien_ strength.” She chewed on the inside of her jaw and grunted, her glare returning to Alex’s case. “They’ve embedded a tracker in you, Astra.”

“A tracker?” I asked, somewhat confused by the sudden shift in atmosphere—from a joyous high to the reality of surveillance, and how those who had the power to hurt me would never leave me, not really. Even now, when I had Kara by my side. Especially now that I had Kara by my side.

“Like the one in your forearm?” I asked.

M’gann nodded gravely.

I grit my teeth and nodded, knowing exactly what came next.

“I can’t see through that case,” I admitted to Alex, who was poised on her toes in black boots, looking like she might be carrying a bomb. “But I’m assuming there’s some crude instrument in there akin to M’gann’s forceps.”

Alex’s jaw twitched, and her brows crinkled together. She turned toward M’gann for answers.

“No black ops team will track me unless I want to be tracked,” M’gann growled, raising the sleeve on her forearm, exposing the gruesome, raised scar that had yet to fully heal.

Alex blanched a bit, and her grip tightened in white-knuckled anger against the handle of the mysterious case. She forced herself to stare at the scar, forced herself, it seemed, to confront everything that her organization was. Everything that _she_ was, in turn. She stared it down, and nodded to herself after observing.

“We’re here to get it out of you,” Alex mumbled, shuffling her weight from foot to foot. “You don’t… you don’t deserve their eyes on you at all times. Astra, you—”

Tears welled but didn’t slip out, even though the skin at the bottom of her sockets was pale and sunken, the whites of her eyes terribly bloodshot. It was awkward. It was… painful, seeing her like that. Neither of us could possibly stay composed around the other, especially when we knew we would only hurt each other more.

“—you don’t deserve any of what’s happened to you. I’m just trying to help—”

“Let’s go, then,” M’gann cut her off, and barged into my apartment, motioning Alex forward. “She needs me to hold you down when she slices into your arm with the poison knife.” She turned back to Alex and put her hands on her hips, menace and disgust and abhorrence distilled into nothing more than two words: “Right, Alex?”

“Yeah, that’s—that’s the objective,” Alex muttered, clearing her throat and trying to look like she had a handle on herself. “I couldn’t think of another way to keep you still.”

Alex came into the apartment and placed the black brief case on top of the counter in the kitchenette. We’d had coffee there, once, together. M’gann had interrupted us. I remembered it with startling clarity.

“Can you, uhm, do you want to change or—?”

“What?”

“You will get blood on your shirt,” M’gann said, looking testily back and forth between us.

“I’m sorry,” I said, my focus ping-ponging between them both. “I—I’m still—”

“The tracker, Astra, there’s a tracker embedded in your arm,” M’gann said, taking me by the shoulders and forcing me to look in her eyes. “While they had you back in those little rooms with those tiny instruments they violated you, stuck a homing device where nothing could get at it… not even if you took a knife to your own body. They know where you are, every second, and it won’t be long before—”

“—they know who you’re with. Who you’re around,” Alex said, drying her hands off on a paper towel after having thoroughly washed them at the sink. “Earlier today, Astra… did you have a visitor?”

“You know I did,” I answered, stepping away from M’gann’s grasp and moving to the linen closet for a towel.

“She texted me,” Alex said.

“Who?” M’gann asked.

“Kara,” Alex answered, moving toward the single dining stool I kept tucked under the kitchenette bar. Alex rolled a pair of bright purple latex gloves onto her hands and began preparing… something, something in the depths of the case.

“I assume you know who Kara is?” Alex asked M’gann.

M’gann sat silently, her jaw clenched, her narrowed stare burning at Alex. Her cheek twitched, but she tucked her hands resolutely beneath her arms, crossing them over her torso and turning from Alex’s preparations back to me, where I had rolled up my sleeve and waited on the couch.

“She’s giving you unsustainable hope, Astra. Just like last time.”

Something clattered against the table top and I turned my attention back to Alex, whose hands were shaking. She kept her attention focused on her task, leaving me to deal with M’gann.

“None of us operate with the freedom we once had,” I answered. “Kara was… is…”

“Something to placate you,” M’gann spat. “Some little peace offering to appease you until those soldiers storm in here and take you in again. Until they do to your coffee shop what they did to my bar.”

“Humans come here. Law-abiding, regular students and business people, minding their own business. _Your_ bar was full of alien criminals,” Alex finally snapped.

M’gann turned on her, red eyes searing. The White Martian beneath her human form was waking, ready for conflict. “You understand nothing, little girl,” M’gann twisted her neck, fighting the urge to shift. Her muscles rippled along the back of her neckline; it seemed as if large beetles were crawling underneath the skin of her exposed arms. She grew six inches in seconds, her voice dropping lower, garbled and menacing: “And yet the human commanders give you so much power to destroy, when you have no idea, no _clue_ , what those beings have lived through.”

“I’m only responsible for what those aliens do here, on earth,” Alex argued, white as a sheet, watching M’gann grow before her eyes. “And you’re… you’re proving my point. I’ve never met a friendly alien.”

“You love at least two of them!” M’gann shouted, throwing her arm round and pointing back at me. Her hair had begun to shorten, retracting eerily back into the follicles on her skull. “I can’t speak to Kara, but you’ve protected Astra from punishment before, punishment that—by your laws—should have been administered. Or should Astra walk free after pushing that boy down the stairs all those months ago? After breaking his _arm_? What gives you the right to pick and choose who sees the light of day, and who gets an interminable jail sentence? She’s not human, Alex, no matter how much you wish she was!”

“M’gann,” I said sharply. “Enough.”

M’gann stood panting in my small apartment, her skin stretched and paler than it should have been, some Martian-human hybrid looming over Alex, doing her best to get a handle on her fraying nerves.

“M’gann!” I snapped again, and she finally began to shrink. Her hair grew back longer and her skin warmed to its darker glimmer; her eyes melted to soft brown instead of fearsome, angry red.

“You both came here… with a mission,” I pushed ahead, hoping to bypass the resentments between a friend and former lover. Both who cared for me in their own unique ways; both poisoned against each other from the cruelties administered by an organization with far more secrets than any of us knew.

“I suggest we get on with it,” I said, laying my arm on the towel I’d spread on the armrest of the couch. “I know you lost most of your alcohol in the raid, M’gann.”

M’gann nodded toward the window, unable to look at me or Alex.

Alex moved closer, a pulsating green scalpel in hand.

“No chance for me to drink any of the pain away, I suppose,” I muttered, feeling slightly queasy the closer Alex came. She had no syringe for a numbing injection to dull the pain—not that I expected her to, given what little humans knew of Kryptonian anatomy (which was honestly far more than I gave her credit for, initially).

Alex reached for my hand but I shook my head, looking sidelong at M’gann to indicate it wasn’t… an outright rejection, but M’gann harbored no good will for Alex in that moment.

_Later_ , I thought, _when we are alone._

Would we be alone again?

Would Alex stay if I asked her?

Did I want her to?

“M’gann,” I called.

Alex knelt on the floor next to my exposed arm while M’gann climbed on top of me, awkwardly straddling my waist to press her forearm across my chest, using her other hand to hold my wrist down. She looked at me, her brown eyes hurt, uncertain, wondering how I’d dragged both of us into this mess, before turning away. She braced herself against my strength, and then I finally turned toward Alex.

“Go ahead,” I said, grabbing for the corner of the blanket on the back of my couch, ready to shove it in my mouth. “Do it quickly and I shouldn’t scream for long.”

Alex gulped, then nodded, and used her left hand to pull the skin taut on the interior of my bicep.

“I’m sorry I keep hurting you,” she whispered, before slicing through the flesh of my arm.

I was only able to muffle a fraction of the shouting. Thankfully I had M’gann to suffocate my screams as her icy tears fell on my cheeks.

 

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all are probably getting chapter 19 on valentine's day <3 <3 <3
> 
> thanks for sticking with me through my return to grad school and, uh, lack of actually watching the show anymore. i still <3 general danvers


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter has everything: hurt/comfort, little bit of philosophy/spirituality, the reconciliation, the make up sex, and what to do moving forward. It's pretty long you guys, but kinda necessary
> 
> note the rating change that really should've changed about 3 chapters ago with all the torture. my bad :/

 

“Don’t be a fool, Astra,” M’gann mumbled to me as I watched Alex over her shoulder, packing up her equipment and the bandages she had brought along with her.

The tracker lay on a paper towel on the counter, speckled with blood, innocently blinking back signs of life to a secret organization who would rather see me locked up than free. For all they knew, I was home alone at the coffee shop, and M’gann was still at the bar. We were too afraid to dispose of the trackers while we remained in our respective places of employment, but I knew I would soon have to make a decision. Leave, and destroy the tracker? Stay on, and leave the tracker here, unharmed, with the ability to go as I pleased, to let them _think_ they knew where I was at all times… never, ever take it to where Kara was.

Not ever.

I watched Alex remove her gloves and putter about my kitchen, taking far more time cleaning up than I knew she needed.

“M’gann…” I shook my head, a dull ache emanating from the top of my arm. Now that the Kryptonite scalpel was encased behind the lead lining of the briefcase, my screams were nothing more than a memory. But M’gann’s tears… I could somehow still feel them. “She’s done everything she can. Everything in her power to seek forgiveness—”

“She betrayed you once,” M’gann argued. “And she’s lying to Kara, whether or not you agree with her, whether or not you think it’s right yourself— _Alex lies,_ Astra. And she will lie to you again. To spare you hurt, or to gain some advantage. That is what humans do, and she is very good at it.”

Then why did she send Kara back to me?

Why did she fight for me at the DEO?

Rao, why had she approached M’gann and alerted her to the tracker, when neither of us knew it had even existed in my own arm? Why had she offered to remove it? Why had she delivered those files—or written that letter? Why had she done everything in her power to save me (immediately, with no hesitation), and how could I think it still wasn’t enough? She made a choice, and imposed an ultimatum. When circumstance necessitated alterations to her original plan, she lifted that ultimatum by sending Kara to me, by sacrificing for me at every turn. She claimed to love, and had shown it over the course of my release these last ten days.

And in spite of it all, I had never quite stopped loving her.

“Perhaps you are right, M’gann,” I sighed, rubbing at my temples with the hand of my uninjured arm. “But I recall a White Martian who changed after immense struggle, and all it took was a clean slate, a second chance—”

“And flagons of alcohol to forget the screams,” M’gann bit back, shaking her head. “Every time I see you, every time she’s with you—Astra, she _hurts_ you. Can’t you see why I wish to protect you?”

I chuckled, unable to refute her logic. “Maybe I am a fool, then,” I agreed, fiddling with the bandage on my arm, remembering the pressure of Alex’s fingers carefully tucking the ends against the looped material. “But I am a fool in love, who has found at least some of her family. Do allow me some small happiness, despite the shadows the loom over us.”

“You have always felt too deeply,” M’gann chastised me, pulling me into her arms. She turned and placed her mouth at my ear, issuing her final warning: “All the returned nieces in the world will not make up for what she put you through. She will prove herself over and over again, to me, before I trust her with you. I only hope for your sake you know what you are doing.”

“I do not,” I answered truthfully, clutching at her back. “I only know what I want— _who_ I want. And though she has disappointed me, and hurt me… she has also made me so happy I could barely stand it. I could have that again.”

“You should not stoop for scraps of happiness,” M’gann chided.

“Not scraps,” I reassured her. “Actions enough for Rao himself to see, even many light years away.”

“Such sentimentality.”

“Perhaps I have mellowed after my trials,” I smiled.

“I do not think so, Astra,” M’gann said, moving for the open window. “Not for a moment.”

She winked at me and ducked out, leaving me alone with Alex for the rest of the night.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“Does it sting?” she asked, maneuvering quickly toward the door, placing her briefcase down, pivoting on her heel so she could return to my pantry. “I don’t suppose you have any pain relievers here—no Advil or Ibuprofen or anything? Did you ever get any for your workers, just in case?—you should keep your arm wrapped until the morning, maybe go to the beach so you can get some sun. It should heal up just fine after—”

“Alex?”

“—the rays hit it. Yeah? Yeah, are you alright?”

Alex stood empty-handed in the kitchen, her black polo half-way untucked, her tight black pants with thousands of pockets looking somewhat soiled—as if she’d been wearing them for a day or two. Her face still looked drawn, her complexion pallid, her voice… raw and shrill and so very uncertain.

“You look very tired,” I told her, wondering if she had slept since the other evening when she had dropped me off at the shop on her motor bike. I wondered if she’d spent all night compiling those records from the DEO that she then sent to me; I wondered how much paperwork she’d had to fill out after barging in against General Lane to set me free; whether she’d had to sit through an insubordination hearing; I wondered if she’d prepared at all for her dinner with Kara… Kara hadn’t mentioned seeing her recently, only that Alex rarely got time off.

When had she last taken a moment for herself?

“I was preparing some pasta, before you arrived,” I offered.

“Oh?” Alex asked, taking a step closer to me before uncertainly withdrawing. “I—I’ll let you get back to it, then.”

I crossed the room and grabbed her arm, just as her other hand reached for the briefcase, preparing to depart.

“Alex,” I said, because I couldn’t say much else.

She closed her eyes, unable to turn back towards me.

“Stay,” I said, wondering if I loved her enough to forgive her. Wondering if love even mattered any more. “I’ll finish dinner and you can shower. Eat, borrow my clothes, we... we need to talk. Just… stay.”

She took a deep breath before nodding shortly, straightening up to her full height as we parted; she toward the bathroom, me toward the dresser.

“Here,” I told her, passing over some threadbare sweatpants and a university t-shirt. They were well-worn and clean, perhaps too warm for the weather outside.

“Thanks,” she said, clutching at my hand when she took them. Her eyes sparkled once more with tears as she scanned my body: my face, my chest, the bandage at my arm. I wasn’t overfond of her scrutiny, so I pulled her palm up to my lips and placed a kiss there, wondering how she took it. Wondering what I meant by it. I did it to distract myself, to distract her. I’m still not sure quite what I was feeling at that moment, though I’m glad I did it. The night seemed less calamitous moving forward, less like just us two were holding up the sky.

“Thank you,” I whispered against her hand, holding it close to my face, remembering just how warm she was to the touch. “Today, for Kara. She told me it was you.”

“I—” she curled her fingers over my own and incidentally brushed my cheek. Fire raced through my face as I held onto her, still angry, still hurt, and still so in love. “You’re welcome,” she managed, squeezing gently against my hand.

“Go on,” I said, and she slipped into the bathroom.

It was going to be a long night.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

I didn’t really have much of a plan with Alex; all I knew was that she had made what reparations she could, and in the timeliest fashion imaginable. It was uncannily militaristic of her; something that I’d recognized from the Reprobations and Grievances process in Krypton’s military courts. She had acknowledged her fault, weighted the claims of damages issued by her hand, and had judged herself to be in the wrong. She repaid damage with information, with reunion, with freedom (freedom in a sense, perhaps—I had yet to figure out what to do with that active tracker).

I placed the pasta on the counter and retrieved filtered water from the refrigerated pitcher, set two glasses out, two plates, two forks, two knives, and two napkins. I pulled the extra stool I used as a coat hanger and catch-all for my keys and wallet from the door and moved those other things on top of it to the floor.

I surveyed my surroundings, wondering if the little tasks could take my mind off of the conversation I would have to have—and which words I hadn’t yet decided to say. It was hard, but I loved her. It was terrible, but she loved me back. And she showed me, over and over again, in what small ways she knew how.

Alex emerged from the bathroom just as I got the second stool in place. She looked limp and wet, like a cat left out in the elements… somewhat haggard in my baggy university wear. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve wondered if she had taken up some damaging recreational drug habit in conjunction with her drinking.

“It’s just… frozen chicken alfredo,” I said, nodding toward the serving dish. “That is—it isn’t frozen _now_ , it’s simply…well, not anything special.”

“It’s fine,” Alex said, padding barefoot across the apartment. “Better than I’ve had in the last few days, at any rate.”

“You’ve not been eating?”

“Haven’t been hungry,” Alex said, scooping a massive helping of creamy noodles and diced chicken onto her plate. “Hadn’t had the time.”

“What about sleeping?” I ventured, taking my turn with the serving spoon and passing Alex the salt and pepper. “You look tired, Alexandra.”

She grinned wryly at that, tilting her head but keeping her focus on her plate. “…nightmares.”

“Ah,” I said, reaching for my glass of water. “So I am not the only one.”

“No,” she muttered, picking up her fork delicately, dragging the dinner napkin over the edge of the counter and unfolding it across her lap. Far more polite than I ever knew Alex to be. “Of course not.”

“I am sorry you haven’t been sleeping well,” I said, reaching out, brushing fingers as we passed the water pitcher back and forth between us, touching with such familiarity it was like she was coming home to me to recount a bad day at the office.

“I’m sorry for…” Alex looked up at me, her fork poised above the pasta, hair frizzing from the residual shower water. “I’m just sorry.”

I nodded and twirled my fork in the pasta, gathering up a portion for my first bite. “Not as sorry as you will be if you don’t eat. This meal is not very good cold,” I muttered, stalling for time once again.

How could I forgive her? How could I thank her?

How could I still love her so ardently?

She obeyed the implied order, concentration dipping down to her plate for the next few moments. The scrape of forks and the muffled sounds of chewing seemed out of place, mundane, given the strained tension we had held between us mere days ago. Perhaps she had taken the invitation into my home as the forgiveness she sought. Though it was not so much an invitation, as a physical guilt-trip—a visit taken to remove that tracker, and to absolve Alex of her reservations. Occasionally we would glance at each other, or at the tracker, or perhaps Alex’s phone. I saw ‘Kara’ flash more than once on the screen, but Alex only replied to the message one time, her downcast gaze shifting from fork to phone with a mumbled ‘excuse me’ and a thick, nervous swallow. We maintained a peaceful semi-silence, at least until the noodles on our plates disappeared.

“I know I already told you, but thank you, for today,” I managed, using my napkin to wipe a bit of sauce from my lip. “For sending Kara to me. I know that could not have been easy.”

Alex’s jaw clenched as she stared across the counter.

“You… you were right,” Alex said, chewing on the inside of her jaw so intensely I almost asked if she wanted another helping of food. “I was cruel to do what I did to you, all those months ago. It truly was… awful.”

I nodded, thankful for that acknowledgement.

“I should not have kept up the lie as long as I did,” I relented to those words, because she was not the only one in the wrong. “When I realized how—how much I was beginning to feel for you… I could have trusted you with who I was. My honesty might have prevented all of this.”

“You couldn’t have known,” Alex protested. “After everything you’ve been through, it’s no wonder you wanted to protect yourself.”

“For the record,” I began, forcing myself to hold her stare. It was a little overwhelming, having her so close, seeing all of her faults and perfections only twenty inches away. “I am sorry as well. I am unsure if I’ve ever stated it, but… I apologize. For lying to you. And… for all that befell afterwards.”

Alex shook her head, sighing into the space between us. “It wasn’t fair,” she reiterated. “I keep going back to… to how it ended in my apartment. I was hungover, but—but that’s no excuse. It wasn’t right, and it didn’t protect either you or Kara the way I believed it would. It caused so much more trouble, and I hurt you. You deserved her, and I didn’t—I c-couldn’t see—”

She couldn’t finish her thought. She shook her head, on the verge of tears, and slid from the stool to pick up her plate. She picked up mine as well, and moved to the sink.

“I am supposed to come to dinner tomorrow night,” I told her, taking up my own spot at her side by the sink. I tossed one dry towel over my shoulder and held another in hand to receive whatever washed dishes she passed my way. I didn’t comment on her silent tears. “Are we to feign ignorance when she introduces us?”

She shook her head, and chuckled wryly.

“Kara is remarkably oblivious about those kinds of things,” Alex said, squirting a stream of blue dish soap onto the surface of the plate. She swiped away and rinsed, and handed it over to me for drying.

“What kinds of things?” I prodded, deducing the answer, taking what little opening she provided me while I rubbed the water off the plate. “Will she know that we’ve met before? She has to know something. She told me you loved my shop. Will she notice that we have spent time together?”

Alex stopped scrubbing the other dish with the purple micro-bristle sponge, her shoulders slumping forward. I leaned into her, wondering if touching her would make me brave enough to venture my next question:

“Has Kara lost all sense of perception, now that she’s come to Earth… that she will not be able to see how helplessly in love we are with each other?”

She sighed, her shoulders slumping, her carefully laid plans shattered by one simple question. Alex took my dry hand in her wet, sudsy one, and held tight. She turned into me and wrapped her arms round my waist, as I tilted down to lift her chin.

“Is it enough?” she whispered, blinking through her tears. She squeezed my hand, as if to reassure herself I wasn’t a phantom; or worse, the stuff of her recent nightmares. “After everything? How can you still want me after all of this?”

“You have done as much as you could do, given the circumstances, Alex,” I said. “But confidential information and a scalpel to the arm have nothing on you sending Kara back to me. You must know that. I love her, I have always loved her. She’s my family. And you…” I placed my hand at the back of her head, and breathed her in. “Rao, I never anticipated you.”

“How could you have? How could you have possibly known what would happen to you— _everything_ that’s happened to you?”

I brushed my thumb over her cheek. “I was a very smart woman once, Alex. Some of my troops even called me wise. They were wrong, of course.” I thought of them wistfully, images of Con-Tul and Yozi and Xate-Kohl in the hanger with the fighter ships, awaiting my commands for departure. “What wisdom I possessed came from admitting my own shortcomings. That there are many things in these many universes that I will never know, or understand. And just one of those things, I think, is how you came to me.”

Alex pulled back from our embrace and looked up at me with fierce, shining eyes.

“You think this was—I don’t know, kismet or something?” she asked skeptically.

“Has Kara spoken to you of Rao, Alexandra?” I asked, turning from her but not separating, dragging her wet hands from about my middle. I toweled away the suds and slipped the rag between our fingertips, wiping with diligent purpose.

“It was your sun,” Alex said, tossing the rag on the counters. She trailed behind me as I led her across the apartment and back to the couch. “But more than that, he was your god.”

“Rao is the sustaining power, the giver of light and life. His influence has shined on all Kryptonian lives, even those that travel beyond where the light touches,” I told her. “Faith was not something that could be quantified, Alex. You must understand that our science and our beliefs were one in the same, tied inextricably; but pockets of provincial peoples on and off-world still believed in Rao’s influence, regardless of the science associated with His Light. I confess to embracing a deeper spirituality to… to make peace with what I did on missions, serving Krypton as a leader and a general. I believe in Him still, and I believe, even having lost so, so much… there is light and life worth living.”

Alex took a long look at my coffee table, mulling over my philosophy. I had not intended to expound upon such matters with her, but were beliefs not the root of action, to some extent? What then, did Alex believe in? Egoist? Utilitarian? Relativist? What did wary, practical, self-sacrificing Alex _believe_?

“I can’t say I can chock it all up to some higher power,” she started. “I… I don’t know if the loss hit when I was too young, or if I just had to grow up too fast. With Kara, y’know? Or even if it was bigger than her—if the world got upended so quickly… ha, it wasn’t that many years ago that us humans didn’t even believe in aliens,” she leaned back into the couch, her gaze distant, her voice soft.

“I forget, sometimes,” I told her. “How young you are.”

Her scathing side-eye was enough to make me clarify:

“Your people, Alex,” I told her, moving my arm behind her on the couch. But I kept flashing back to her long hair, her hunched shoulders, the way her leather jackets seemed to swallow her when she sat at the counter, pouring over an anatomy text. It had been almost a year and a half since I had met her, and she had grown a lot in that time. Yet still…“But you are young, as well.”

“You’re kind of patronizing, you know?”

I did know. I still harbor some ill-will towards humans, even consider them… primitive, which they are. The worst parts of me, parts of me that Alex had seen—Rao, had it only been two weeks since our encounter in the bathroom?—manifested in my scathing remarks as I held her throat, choking her against the wall in Maxwell Lord’s lobby.

“I do not mean to insult you,” I whispered to her, my fingers gravitating toward her head, to smooth through her damp hair. The strands curled round my fingers in little silk tornadoes, mud-brown and fresh. “I have my own biases against which I fight. Everyone does. M’gann, Cat, Han and Connie… I’m sure Kara does as well.”

“Kara loves every creature on this Earth,” Alex remarked, turning into my touch. “She’d find some redeeming quality in even the vilest of criminals. That’s why I worry about her so much—she believes the best in people. Gives them one too many chances.”

“And you and I know better, is that it?”

“Yeah,” Alex sighed, tucking her legs underneath her on the couch, twisting so that she could face me properly. The glow of the lamps shone against her pale cheeks. There was still little color to her face, but her lips tipped up in a half-grin as she relaxed into my touch. Her jaw muscles were slack, her posture loose… like she had finally been granted respite from some great burden, and saw fit to unload it once she was with me again.

“At the end of it all, I think it comes down to what gets you through the day,” Alex managed. “For Kara, it’s a lot of things. Happy things. Warm things, things to believe in. For you, it’s Rao. It’s your family, your memories, your friends, maybe… maybe even me?”

“Of course it’s you,” I reassured her, bringing her hand up to kiss her knuckle. “You’ve become so important to me, Alexandra.”

Alex bit her upper lip, hesitant it seemed, before pulling my own hand to her mouth. She returned the kiss I gave her against my hand and breathed there until she seemed to collect herself. “You’re important to me, too,” she confessed, before pulling our joined hands down and placing them on her leg.

“But I’m… I’m different than you, I think. There’s not much I believe in. I believe in action. In people. And you…” she squeezed my hand as she had when we were touching at the sink moments earlier, as she had when I lay unconscious in the sunbed. Like she had months ago, when we had sex on her kitchen table, and before that, at the bus stop outside the mattress store, which is where I believe I fell fully in love with her. It was easy to pinpoint now, just from her touch. And she held fast, remembering, shoring up her bravery before continuing:

“I hated how you lied to me. I thought you were using me to get to Kara, thought you knew more than you did, and that assumption wrecked us both. I can’t say I still wouldn’t have joined the DEO, though. It keeps me too linked up to threats that have a direct impact on people that I love, so I can’t say I wouldn’t have made the same choice—”

She hiccuped, choking on her last words. Her relaxed face had pinched again, her eyes grown wet with tears.

“You did what you thought would protect her,” I said, catching a stray tear as it fell. “I didn’t understand. I should have tried harder to… to win you back—”

“I wouldn’t have—have listened,” she gasped, rubbing her eyes against the sleeve at her shoulder. “I was too hurt. Too b-betrayed. I stuck my head in the sand and wouldn’t listen to reason. Hank gave me purpose. Saved me. My anger over you only made me want to punch aliens harder.”

She swiped at another tear and I decided not to address the comment (even though I knew [and she knew] that if she punched me, she would probably break her hand).

“And it hurt, calling it off with Ashley… with you. Who I thought you were. Who…who you _are,_ to some extent, I guess _._ It hurt that I loved you and it hurt that I lost you and it hurt knowing I was training to fight people like you.” She fisted her hands on top of her knees, her forearms shaking from her checked fury. “It hurt growing up with Kara and it hurts, everyday, the secret of it all, the pressure of it—god Astra, it hurts so much.”

“Alex…” I pulled her into me, wrapped her up in a hug, and shed the hot tears that I had managed to hold at bay.

“I lost my father to the people I work for. I lost my childhood to the sister I grew to love. And I lost pieces of my heart to you, to something I thought could’ve been mine.”

“I’m sorry,” I murmured, wondering how often the refrain would need repeating.

“Everything hurts all the time but I realized, the second before I got those files, and started writing that letter… Astra,” Alex drew back a few inches and held my gaze, cupped my cheeks in her hands and mumbled her confession. “I don’t think I’m ever going to feel better. I can’t. Not with what I know, and not with what I do. And I don’t have Rao to help me through it.”

I pulled her hand away from my cheek and kissed it again and again; the palm, her knuckles, tasting her apologies and her fears and our resolution. Perhaps that’s what this was. Perhaps I had too much hope in her.

“I’m never going to feel better about any of it, but you… you help to make it _hurt less_.”

She leaned in and drew her mouth over mine, suffocating her pain with my forgiveness. Because I did forgive her, all her rash decisions, all her faults, all her fallible humanity. I forgave her because I loved her, and because she loved me. She kissed me the way I imagined lovers kissed after long separations, desperately, gratefully, as if she could not believe I was back in her arms again.

And even though I felt elated by action, and by our tentative reconciliation, I knew this was not the end of our struggles; it was not the end of our negotiations, or of our doubts about each other. And it was not the end of our lies, even after all we’d been through.

We were much too full of ourselves, thinking we knew better than those around us, knew better than Kara, especially, but for that night… we put most of our doubts aside, and finally made it to bed, kissing intermittently. Alex made a sleepy comment about finally getting to try out the mattress she’d helped me select so many months previous. I was nervous to hold her, remembering my rage at Maxwell’s party. But she didn’t care.

She trusted me.

We pulled back the blankets and fell into each other’s arms, drifting into a bone-deep, peaceful rest.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The next morning was surreal.

I was not expected to come into work until 9 a.m., and I didn't wake until just after seven, a late hour for me. My arm was beneath Alex’s neck, her front sandwiched against my own. The crown of her head was tucked snugly beneath my chin. I had no intention of moving, even for coffee, even for food. I didn’t even have to open my eyes to enjoy her presence against me.

Her warmth penetrated my grey t-shirt I’d worn to bed. Her breath puffed in gentle exhalations against my clavicle. She smelled of my shower and my linens; I could hear the powerful, measured drumming of her heart thudding against her ribcage.

She was a magnificent spectacle, and she was in my arms.

“You’re being weird,” she mumbled, nuzzling further into the crook of my neck, lifting her arm to drape it over my waist.

“I am nothing of the sort, unless you are referring to my enhanced abilities,” I joked with her, happy to finally be able to tease her so openly.

“You’re watching me sleep. Only stalkers watch people sleep.”

“My eyes have been closed this whole time.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Open yours, see for yourself.”

“Mine are open.”

“Now who is the stalker?”

I smiled broadly, and felt her thumb on my cheek, lifting my face on the pillow.

“Will you be terribly mad at me if I kiss you with morning breath?”

“That hardly ranks on either of our lists of transgressions concerning the other,” I replied. “Proceed, soldier.”

“Agent,” she corrected me.

I popped one eye open at the correction. “Agent?”

“Agent Danvers, actually.”

“Not doctor?”

She readjusted above me, moving so that she could prop herself up on her elbow. She looked like a geometric puzzle that morning, all sharp angles and straight lines, her cropped hair having flattened into a sleek curtain of auburn-tinted mahogany after a night spent with her head on my pillow.

“Still working on the ‘doctor’ part... should complete all the tests and submit my proposal for review by the end of the summer. They’ve got accreditation standards through the DEO, through Johns Hopkins, actually… that was my first choice of school but I knew I couldn’t go that far away. Not without Kara.”

“Were you accepted?”

“They were gonna give me a scholarship,” Alex said, the regret more evident than she realized. “But I don’t want to dwell on missed opportunities.”

“Well said.”

“Better to take the ones in front of me, right?” she asked, leaning down and blocking my vision.

“You did inquire as to the rules concerning your morning brea— _hmph_!”

Morning breath was forgotten, it seemed, because Alex kissed me long and lazily. She smacked her lips against my own, and swept her tongue into my open, eager mouth.

I had missed her physicality: holding her hand as we strolled along the sidewalk; kissing her cheek when we parted; the weighted, secure feeling of her arms around me, when we were so happy to see each other that we hugged and touched much too long for people who were oftentimes in public. And I had missed tasting her, the heat of her, that singular feeling of her form against my own as the pair of us exchanged slow, searing promises through teeth, lips, and tongue. I missed the giddy, light sensation I felt when she ran her fingertips over my forearms, and the dizzying sloshiness she produced in my brain.

I wanted to make everything up to her. I wanted to share the bliss of morning with her, before we had to face the reality of her job, the reality of my surveillance, and the shared reality of Kara.

“Astra,” she mumbled against my mouth, tugging on my top lip with her teeth.

“Y-yes?” I breathed, brushing the flesh of my lips against her chin, against a chapped portion at the corner of her mouth. We were so close I could not speak without touching her.

“Can I make love to you?” she asked, pressing her lips against the right side of my throat. She lingered there, fearful perhaps that I might pull away, fearful of my answer, after everything.

“Alexandra—”

“Let me show you,” she pressed. “Let me show you how… how much I...”

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to… with you, _just_ you, Astra. I’ve never wanted… I’ve never done this with…”

My eyes flew open and I sat us both up, pressing against her chest in my rush to make sense of her half-confession.

“Alex, you’ve never—”

“Not with a woman,” she explained, staring resolutely at my shoulder. “Fits and starts, with guys, I just… I never liked it. Never wanted it. Not like I want this.” she rubbed her hands up and down my arms, pulling my sleeves up so that they bunched near my shoulders, and then dragging her fingers down so that the fabric fell back against my bicep, against the bandage from last night, against the tracker, and the memory of the DEO, and all the hurt that it had caused.

“I—”

“Yes?” Alex prompted, rubbing her thumbs along my elbows. She held my gaze, sensing my hesitancy. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“I’m… afraid,” I said, surprising even myself. I think I had known it, that perhaps we would come to this more quickly than we ought, and here I was, scared to move. Scared to even touch her, knowing the intensity of my desire for her.

“Of me?” she asked, her thumbs stilling in their soft circling, her brow pinched in confusion.

“No, I… not of you,” I managed, leaning in, pressing a kiss against her lips because I wanted to, because I needed her to ground me. “But when you touch me, when I touch you… I just… Alex, what I did to you at that party, in the bathroom, I almost—”

“But you didn’t.”

“I couldn’t control myself—”

“Because you were drugged, Astra. It wasn’t you. We’ve been through this, you have to know that that was not the real you.”

“But it was _parts_ of me!” I argued, feeling the ease of the morning charge to something more tenuous. “Those thoughts are… were… I’ve felt them so fleetingly, I’ve known they were wrong and I promise, Rao forgive me, Alexandra, I would never touch you without your consent—”

“And I wouldn’t do anything to you, either, Astra, if that’s not something you wanted,” Alex told me, scooting closer to bring our foreheads together. “But if the only reason that you don’t want me to touch you is that you regret something that happened—that you couldn’t control—then I want to reassure you that I understand the implications of this. I understand exactly who I want, and I feel safe in these surroundings, with you, at this exact moment. And I would be… honored, to be with you, Astra.”

I dove into her for a kiss, whispering _yes_ over and over against her lips.

I wasn’t sad, far from it. Though I was not exactly elated, and not quite happy. Content, perhaps; understanding. Knowing everything, I felt secure, and even with that tracker on the table across the room, I felt safe, mirroring Alex’s emotions almost exactly. Alex held me so tightly I had no reason to feel afraid.

She kissed me thoroughly, headily, her tongue delving into my mouth like every exchange might be her last opportunity to taste me. Her fingers worked expertly against my skull, tunneling through my curls and rubbing little circles of comfort into my scalp. We kissed and we kissed until sunlight shone through the shades near the bedside, casting a warm glow about the room.

I was able to see her form better then, as the sun rose slowly over the buildings downtown. I would still close my eyes, though, content to feel her lips on my neck as I shifted beneath the sheets. I reveled in the slow, wet drag of her mouth along the tendons of my throat, and the sharp grate of teeth beneath my ear. She seemed to be etching a pattern into my skin, scratching me so the world would know I was loved, and that someone was _proud_ for loving me, proud enough to leave their mark.

“Astra,” she said, and I remembered the other moment when I had her like this, when she’d called me _Ashley_ , a name that wasn’t my own. It was harder then, on a countertop instead of a plush mattress we had picked out together; everything was harder, then. Perhaps, even all those months ago, I had harbored repressed fantasies of mornings like this, wrapped so intricately in each other’s arms we’d hardly be able to untangle ourselves.

The exchange had more depth to it now, more reverence in the raw, broken syllables she uttered against my body. She said _Astra_ the most, and experimented with other terms of endearment, finally settling upon _babe_ as I sucked my own mark into the skin beneath her ear. It was mostly my name, _Astra, Astra—god_ , but the endearment was always accompanied by an intriguing little follow-up:

_Babe, please; yes, babe, right there—Astra, babe, do that again_ …

I reached for her hand and entwined our fingers, drawing our arms upward so that every inch of skin touched, so that we might remain as close as possible. The friction of our cotton t-shirts produced warm, itchy sensations along my abdomen, like pin-pricks, or the feeling of dry skin after being exposed to the sun for much too long. I moved us back into a sitting position so I could properly look at her; she perched herself above me, straddled my hips, and fought for every heaving breath.

Her breasts swayed beneath the fabric of the borrowed shirt as she squirmed and shifted; I felt the softness of her, the gradual lines of her, and the pillowy sensation of pliable muscles and a lean trunk as it nestled against my own form. Her nipples peaked hard and distracting through the thin grey fabric, so I moved my hands underneath her shirt to roll them between the tips of my fingers.

“Oh, _babe,_ fuck...”

I nudged her back a little so that she tilted her head while I kissed her neck; while my fingers pinched and tugged her wrinkly brown tips. She thrust her chest more fully into my hands and rocked her center into my abdomen, dragging her core against the layers of fabric and sweatpants that kept us separated. Her hands threaded through my curls as breathy gasps escaped, as another _oh fuck_ poured from her when I bit at her breast through the shirt. I released her chest and my hands slid down her sides, rubbing and clutching the whole time. I cupped her backside in both hands and pulled her closer, closer— _never close enough_ —lavishing her throat and jaw and lips and ears with kisses and focused attention.

I covered every portion of skin my mouth had not yet bitten, sampling every square millimeter with my taste buds should something terrible take her away from me again, should our bliss be cut short by yet another circumstance beyond our control. Her litany of _babes_ and _fucks_ and _Astra, please_ s spurred me on in my mission. I wanted to bring her the utmost pleasure as recompense for all the pain we’d put each other through.

After several moments of concentrated attention to my throat, she sighed against me and pulled my head back up to her own; she sucked intently at my bottom lip, using her teeth to scrape along the plump, swollen flesh. I kissed back with equal fervor, intent to requite her aggressive physicality at every turn. I had to show her, through touch, through taking, that I was trying to bestow my forgiveness. She had earned at least that much; and I was so starved for her attention, I delivered it in spades.

She took my hand and guided it nearer her center; even dipped beneath the loose waistband of her sweats and pressed our joined fingers into the fabric still separating me from her.

She was soaked.

“Astra… this is w-what—” Her breath still came in pants, in delirious gulps of air. “—what you d-do to me. Never stop. I don’t want you to ever stop.”

“Alexandra,” I breathed her in, relishing in the desperate clutch of her hand, in the damp warmth of her center.

She finally shifted back and pulled our hands from where she’d led them, releasing me and tucking her hair back behind her ears. She took a moment to compose herself and regain some control over her breathing. My hands moved to either side of her ribcage, holding her there, waiting for her next cue.

Her flushed face looked angelic in the morning light, far more rested than she’d been the night before. She smelled of my shampoo and soap, like my detergent, like my clothes, like mine, _mine_ , all mine, and her loyalties were to me and no other. Her white pallor had brightened to a gorgeous rose, and her hair felt soft and clean as it rustled against her shoulders. She took a moment to inspect the bandage on my arm before pulling my sleeve up to kiss the muscle above it, mumbling something incomprehensible as she took a fortifying breath.

Our eyes finally locked once more as she came back to the moment, back to me. Her fingers toyed with the hem of her shirt, her gaze shifting, her breasts, sensitive and heaving underneath the fabric from my previous attention. I smiled up at her before pressing a kiss to the center of her chest, before my own fingers met hers and grabbed at the hem, pulling the material upwards to reveal a torso littered with intermittent yellow bruises.

Even with her healing injuries, she looked stunning. Her abdomen was flat from months of physical training, and her ribs protruded like a keyboard I might play a song upon, if I had any instrumental talent. I fit my fingers in the slots between those bones and brushed my thumbs over the underside of her small, pert breasts, watching her eyes slip closed with every swipe. She arched into the touch, her lips falling open on a quick, high gasp.

I was not satisfied, nor was she. As my hands flew to her waistband she dove for the hem of the shirt I wore. Past kneecaps and elbows and the wrenching of one shoulder we eventually disrobed completely, save for my black underwear. I found myself on my knees as well, kneeling and facing Alex on top of the disheveled covers. When we kissed, she took handfuls of me, of my thighs, my healed bicep, my breast or my hair; she grabbed my ass and pulled me flush against her front so our torsos blended against each other, skin melded like melted metal from a blow torch. Her body undulated against mine, rocking violently, rutting so quickly against my thigh she painted me slick with her arousal.

We fell horizontal again, yet somehow I managed to land on top of her. My elbows bracketed her face, and her tongue sneaked out to lick against the pointed tip of my nipple before she blew cool air against it. I bucked into her, unable to control myself.

“Rao, Alex—”

She took my breast in her mouth and sucked against me, rolling her tongue over me as her free hand pinched and pulled at my other nipple. Her leg shifted torturously against my center and I slid like a woman without control, with abandon, unable to withstand the humid hollow of her around me, the heat she engendered with a touch I had desired for so very long. She released my breast and kissed her path across my chest, dragging her tongue, her head bobbing up and down against the pillow as she chose the best course. Her tongue flicked out and barely licked me; she grinned, looked up at me, and drew my long curtain of curls over one of my shoulders as she pulled one of my fingers into her mouth, biting the side of it teasingly.

I chuckled at the behavior, so carefree, so relaxed. She kissed the tip of my index before licking it, before sucking it into her mouth and rolling her tongue all round it. Her moans were divine; my shocked gasps thrilling. The way she bobbed and swirled around the digit left me breathless and so… so extremely _aroused._

She eventually released my captive hand and laid siege to my clavicle, then my neck once again, and then lower against my chest, pushing me off of her so that she could roll onto her side and lavish attention on the breast she had not yet tended to. She guided my own saliva-slick hand up my chest to my nipple, trailing a teasing pattern of pinches, tugs, and twists with her guiding touch.

“God, Astra, you are so beautiful…”

She blew on the wet trail up my abdomen and I shivered, some strange sensation of contrasting temperatures raising bumps along my body that made me feel weightless. Her hot mouth returned to my breast and she suckled once again, drawing the pointed tip in and out with wet, suctiony noises that echoed loudly throughout the apartment.

I would never forget the sonorous, resounding hammer of my heart; or the sharp notes of the wet seal breaking, of Alex’s puckered mouth, skimming damp paths against my skin; or of her hums, low and rattling as she tasted more and more of my body.

“I love you,” she said against my ribs. She traced her fingers along my abdomen and shifted, moving so that she lay further down the bed. She dipped her thumb against my navel, marveling at the small indent there. I trembled beneath her, squirming, yearning, seeking so much more from her.

“Alex?”

She looked back up at me before diving down and swirling her tongue against the dip in my belly. My hips canted upwards, wanting more, _needing_ her, so open and desperate from her thorough survey of my body.

“I didn’t know you’d have a mark here…Kara doesn’t have much of one, a belly button, I mean,” Alex muttered.

She smirked into my stomach and took a bite of the flesh there, her teeth grazing against the slight pooch I had gained with age and lack of training.

“Is… is that unattractive?” I asked, though such a question seemed rather silly given what she had just done to me.

“Belly-button or not, you are so beautiful,” she told me. Her hands migrated to the soft space behind my knees and pushed my legs up, so that my feet were planted to either side of her torso. Her chin hovered just above the hem of my underwear, her brown eyes blown so hazy and dark they looked black as deep space.

This was Alex, with all of her fears, her insecurities, and her secrets, all revealed and bare, just like the rest of her body. Her hands crawled in between the space of my planted feet and my hips, then curled round the tops of my thighs. She drew me closer and I shuddered, unable to untangle the knot of us, unwilling to try.

She took a deep breath, her nose trailing over the fabric that still covered my center. I twitched, feeling something beginning to tighten inside me, like a screw twisting into place.

“You smell wonderful.”

“Alex, _please_ —”

She licked a long swipe along the outside of the fabric before moving her face to the right, kissing the inside of my left thigh.

And Rao, _oh Rao_ she bit me, she sucked hard and long at the meaty flesh there, her fingernails carving little crescents into the top of my leg. I squirmed underneath her but she latched on, kissing and tonguing and sucking until the blood all rushed to the surface of my skin and turned purple for an instant, before fading back to paleness. I watched as she stared, as I reached for the hands she had wrapped around my thighs, as I lay there and took everything she dealt me.

“Straighten your legs.”

I moved fast, curling my abs, twisting my hips, helping her remove my underwear, scrambling to feel her against me, on top of me, Rao, _inside me_ , as I’d wanted for so, so long.

I pulled her head back up and sat up myself, bringing her lips against my own so I could kiss her, taste her, and come undone underneath her. Her hair slipped through my fingers so I held on, tugging a little, enough to make her whimper. I pulled her down on top of me as we kissed. She moaned when I slipped my tongue in her mouth, when my wet center rubbed against her leg.

“Oh fuck—God… wait, Astra—”

“Alex, _Alex,_ oh, darling, p-please—”

I grabbed her ass and rutted against her leg, feeling the screw tighten infinitesimally further inside of my abdomen. With each heaving wave of my body against hers, something threatened to burst inside of me.

“If you come before I taste you, I swear to God—”

She wrenched herself out of my grasp and I growled my protests. Those protests were soon transmuted to gasps of bliss as she fondled my breasts while she continued to kiss down my body, my belly, my thighs, all the way down to lay her forearm across my hips. She rubbed her chin through the patch of hair just above my center, then she glanced up at me for confirmation, her mouth gaping slightly, her breathing ragged as my own.

“What I lack in experience,” she began, clutching my skin tighter, nuzzling along the dip of my pubic bone, “I fully expect to make up for in enthusiasm.”

“Hmm…” I hummed, my hand finding the crown of her head, scratching light paths along her scalp. “Please, Alex.”

Finally, Rao, _finally_ , her tongue trailed along the seam of me, slipping inside just far enough to taste her handiwork, the arousal she’d produced from her kisses and her touch. She licked into me again, moving her tongue in some pattern so outstanding I cried out, clutching the pillow above me with one hand, my grip on her head carefully controlled.

“Oh, _Alex_!”

She hummed her response into me, sucking against my folds, taking the flesh on the right side of my center into her mouth, and then the left, before zig-zagging her tongue up the split between them. I felt her fingers move along the heated, soaking flesh, spreading me wide so her tongue could penetrate deeper and wind me up tighter. It was like I was a child’s toy, a top, twisted and twisted until I could hardly twist anymore; I was dripping for her, dizzy, and when Alex released me, I would surely spin out of control. Her tongue worked diligent magic against my core, patterns inconsistent and surprising. Outside, inside, left, right, working her way upwards, dangerously slow. She dove into me and I moaned into the morning, the rays from the sunrise hitting my injured arm. I clutched one of the bars of the headboard so hard I accidentally flattened the metal between my fingers.

Turns out that arm had healed rather quickly.

“ _Alexandra_ ,” I breathed, bucking into her mouth..

My love shifted slightly higher, moving to place her weight on her left arm, nudging my leg over her head so that the heel of my foot pressed into her back.

“Are you…” I was breathing so heavily I could hardly get a word out. “Alex, are you okay?”

“I am so beyond, ‘okay’,” she smirked, her entire face shimmering with what she’d done to me. “How about you?” she asked, moving her hand and slipping inside me. Her index finger slid against my walls at her leisure, her dashing smirk so conceited and mischievous I felt I might perish before she allowed me my release. “Everything satisfactory so far? We need to keep talking about it?”

“ _Blehktl_ ,” I swore, my head falling back on the pillows. I juttered my hips further down the mattress, trying to sink onto her finger.

“Hmm?”

“Rao, Alex, _more_.”

She twisted her index and on her next thrust inserted another finger, dipping back down to flick her tongue against my clit so quickly I wondered if she’d inherited some superspeed by proximal osmosis.

“ _Rao--_!”

I rocked into her and she thrust as hard as her arm would allow at the angle she took, staring up from my center with watering eyes and flushed cheeks. She inserted a third finger, pumping in and out so fast the bed knocked against the wall; she sucked so hard on my clit that I fell into a tail-spin, waves of sensation cresting and releasing at various intervals through every cell in my body. I clutched her hair too tightly but I did more damage to the headboard, though that didn’t register until long after I’d floated back against the mattress. I’m sure I shouted, or growled, or cried out, feeling her Rao-blessed tongue continue to lick against me, feeling her fingers pushing through the tight contractions.

She caught me as I fell, charred and frazzled from the heat of it all. She kissed my knee while I recovered, then my ankle, my hipbone, my wrist, my heaving chest. I pulled her in and tasted everything she took, felt her hum as I dropped kisses and little laps of my own tongue against her wet cheeks.

“I love you,” I whispered to her. “I love you and I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything, and I love you so, Alexandra—”

“Astra,” she mumbled, twisting her head, sealing her lips over my own.

I was floating somewhere beyond Rao’s light, wondering if I had inhaled too long from the pipes of meritikka on Starhaven. This effervescence, this euphoria, felt like the high of that smoke. Those pipes were long, and their mouthpieces sweet, almost as sweet as Alexandra. She held me as I tried to steady my breathing, as I felt the tiny, residual jolts of pleasure zinging through my head and core. She stroked my naked back as I cleaved to her like a parasite, wrapped tightly, feeding off of her body’s equilibrium. My body was so energized I couldn’t fathom how Alex was lying so peacefully beside me, so I sought to increase her heart rate. To make her feel as thrilled and wonderful as I felt, catching my breath atop the sheet.

She pushed hair away from my face and watched me, stroked my cheek with her thumb, and smiled sweetly. She murmured little comforts to me, but I didn’t want her comfort. I wanted her pleasure. I blinked slowly back to life, feeling some physical capacity return to my limbs. I placed my own hand on her hip, and circled my thumb over the bone there, hoping she would not take much notice (she was not the only mischievous one).

And, even spent as I was, I was still stronger than her.

“So how did I do for my first—holy _shit_!”

It took speed, strength, and that bold, brain-addled determination I felt after orgasm for me to manhandle her as I did, but I wanted her so much, as quickly as I could have her, and I knew that the only way to achieve that was to… move her on top of me.

Her hands were gripping the headboard as she pitched forward unexpectedly, bent over while I drew her knees over my shoulders, my hands holding her up and circling her waist with a grip hard enough I feared I would add to her bruises. She did not seem to mind, though it was something of a surprise.

“What do you think you’re doin—oh, _god_ —!”

My nails dug into the flesh of her lower back as I pulled her core against me, kissing into her center, tasting her just as she had done to me. To look from underneath her and witness her pleasure produced an astonishing rapture of its own. I was still semi-dazed, lying on my back and licking into her, drowning in the scent of her, the _sense_ of her, _Alexandra_ , around me and inside of me and cracking me apart until she alone could put me back together.

“Oh, babe fuck…fuck, yes.”

I felt her quads tense near my ears, her legs toned from months of training. I felt movement above me so I followed her, kissing into her as she rocked against my mouth, as she let me take everything I wanted from her.

“Astra, god—”

My hand climbed her torso like a vine curling round a trellis, hanging up on her hip, her ribs, moving between her breasts to support her quaking form as she lurched above me. From the angle beneath, I couldn’t quite see her face, which was a shame, but I could hear her heartbeat pounding, could feel the sweet friction of her skin against my own… I could taste the reality of her, nothing dreamt, nothing fantasized, just Alex and her imperfectly perfect human body.

I removed one hand from supporting her lower back and walked my fingers round her front, dragging my thumb along that nub that set my own body on fire. She gasped, tensed, and then rutted against the pressure with more power than I imagined her lithe frame possessed. She tilted forward again, putting weight on one of her extended arms against the headboard, and then I felt the fingers of her opposite hand in my hair.

“Right—unh, r-right there, baby…”

She murmured incoherently after getting those last few words out, a series of broken syllables falling from her lips as her arousal flowed freely. She felt amazing, tasted better than any coffee I’d ever made, and sounded as if she would come undone at any second. I slipped inside of her with two fingers and pumped several times, relishing in the way she yanked at my hair and grinded against my tongue.

“Astra—”

I drew her clit between my lips and hummed, twisting my fingers deeply within her simultaneously.

“ _Astra_!”

The lights of the apartment darkened in an instant as her legs closed round my head, tensing from her climax. The smell of her overwhelmed most of my other senses; even my fingertips felt numb where they moved within her pulsing center. She rocked and hummed as the aftershocks overtook her, her legs slowly loosening, then trembling, then, unable even to hold her weight any longer, relaxing completely as she fell towards her left, her knee almost clocking me in the jaw if not for my quick reflexes.

I couldn’t seem to move, either, even with only half her leg draped across my naked chest. I put my hand on her calf and reached for her, my wet fingers trailing against her skin and eventually landing somewhere near her hip. She was still shuddering from the shock of it all, still breathing as if she had endured the worst physical training of her life. I gripped hard against her leg and counted for a long time, the units in the Kryptonian Interplanetary Legion, the lightyears and star zones between the Hastion Sector and the Dwyer Periphery, the lakes of the Kryptonian provinces and the number of coffee roasters I had in my current inventory. It allowed me to dissociate for a moment, to try and… to try and process what I had just experienced.

Alex.

_Alexandra_.

Alex Danvers.

_Agent_ Alexandra Danvers.

“Astra.”

I peered over my shoulder at the woman lying half on top of me, her back curved with geometric perfection, a Fibonacci spiral, all balance and symmetry; she was (and is, to this day) my measured portion. She drew her leg over and off of my chest, then scurried down the mattress to face me.

Beneath her skin, the protrusions of her spine shifted, like little animals stirring from hibernation. I wanted to run my fingers over the knots. I wanted to trace every inch of her until I knew her body more intimately than my own. I wanted to question her resolve and challenge her opinions and watch her grow as she had grown over the past several months; she had changed so much already, and I wanted to know her epitome—I wanted to know her, always.

She propped herself up on one elbow and leaned over me, placing a hand on my cheek. She dipped, and kissed me, and I knew then that I could never hide this. Not Alex and I. Not from someone who I wanted to share my joys with, after so many of our joyful moments had been stolen.

“You are so…” she shook her head, reaching over to play with that streak of white that bothered me so. Her fingers twisted in the strands and followed the convoluted loops, distracting her from her statement.

“Yes?” I redirected, catching her hand in my own and planting a quick kiss to her knuckle. “What am I to you?”

“Not just to me,” Alex returned. “You’re just…you’re everything. You’re the… the ice cream and the cherry. The espresso and the foam. You’re a Ferrari and the Autobahn and a book with an unlimited library loan and I—I don’t know how to handle someone so amazing.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I’ve messed up so many times before,” Alex whispered. “And when I mess up—not if, _when_ , because it’s going to happen, I know it will—”

“Alex—”

“I won’t be able to come back from it,” Alex said, diving into the side of my neck. “If I lose you, it will hurt me so much I—I don’t know what I’ll do with myself.”

“Why do you suppose you will lose me?” I asked, gathering her up in my arms, tucking her into my embrace. “Why do you suppose you will ever be rid of me?”

“There’s just—there’s just so _much_ , Astra. The alien fighting—you knew it was a front for alien trafficking. And that Maxwell Lord? He’s got his own agenda against aliens that’s completely independent of the DEO, not to mention General Lane’s recent tirades and mandated oversight after your—after we released you.”

“I was not really released,” I said.

“Exactly. The tracker, the labs, the training, the… the fighting, Astra…” she hugged me tighter, snuggled and shifted, moving so that her limbs threaded through my own. “It’s all so… so _complicated_.”

I ran my fingers over the crown of her head, trying to puzzle out some solution. What would be the next step? If there was an attack, how would we circumvent it? How could we explain my involvement, or Alex’s involvement, and who would hold us accountable? Connie and Han, Jeremiah and Leah? Or was it Kara, that we were beholden to? Alex’s superiors? Cat? M’gann?

What could we do to make it easier, what burden could we remove that would give us some respite, that would do the least amount of damage?

It seemed rather obvious.

“Alex?”

“Hmm?” she sniffed, nuzzling into me.

“Should we… we’re going to tell Kara about us,” I said, wondering at the phrasing, how it had formed as a question in my head, and yet left my mouth as a statement. As I spoke the words, my resolve strengthened. “Tonight. At dinner. We will tell her about our relationship.”

“Wait… wait, no, what are you saying?” Alex asked, pushing up, pulling the sheet over her chest, her tone more apprehensive than angry, more hesitant than defensive.

“We cannot sustain these lies in her presence,” I clarified. “ _I_ cannot do that to her, Alex. How can I feign ignorance tonight and pretend as if I am meeting you for the first time, after everything you’ve made me feel? It would drive me mad, Alexandra, to live that lie at Kara’s expense.”

Alex nodded immediately, her agreement swift and unexpected. “I get it. When you put it like that, I—we can’t do that to her. So… so we come clean?”

“Yes. That is… if we continue seeing each other—or, no, it has to be this way. If you want to be with me, we have to tell her.” I chanced an ultimatum of my own. Despite our lovemaking, the stress of the situation cast doubt on what I had once felt so sure of. “If… if you still want me.”

“Astra, of course I _want_ you,” Alex said, reaching out to take my hand. “I _love_ you, and if you think there’s a way for us to… to talk about this with her, but, and this is a big but, we cannot risk Kara’s safety in the process, okay? I want to scream from the rooftops that I’m with you, but that’s—it’s just not feasible. Not with the current legislation. Not with my work, and not with Kara so close to us both. We’d be inviting further scrutiny, and you’re already under heavy surveillance.”

Our gazes wandered over to the kitchenette and the blinking, threatening tracker. I had still had it in my arm yesterday, when I had walked about campus with Kara. But I often went to campus, so there was nothing out of the ordinary in my travel.

But that night, Rao, if I had worn that tracker to dinner that evening, they would’ve known where Kara lived, I would have led them right _to_ her…

Thank Rao for Alex, truly…I thank Rao everyday for Alexandra.

“I understand,” I nodded, recalling even the scrutiny of elders concerning matches at much younger ages on Krypton, thinking it similar to inter-planetary relationships on earth. The politics of it all, the hierarchy, the deals and the cultural stigmas of marrying outside of one’s class, let alone one’s own species.

“But it will be tonight,” I said. “I am anxious to call her already, to confirm our plans.”

“I get it, you’re excited,” Alex smiled, leaning in to press a kiss against my lips. “So, we’ll have to get our stories straight. At least about us, about… maybe about me and Ashley— _you_ , I mean, when we didn’t know who we were to one another. I… I told her about you, about Ashley, I mean, but not in so many words…”

“What do you mean?”

Alex rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling for a few moments, taking my hand hostage. She drew lines between the inclines and valleys of my fingers, along calluses from ages past, along the skin of my knuckles I had split time and time again in battle. She traced the lines of my palm and finally fitted her hand against my own, slotting her fingers into my grip and gripping tightly, as if I might draw away.

As if I could ever leave her again.

“I told you this was my first time with a woman.”

“One would’ve never known it, with your skill,” I mumbled back to her, feeling heat flood my face.

She twisted to look at me, and cocked a skeptical brow. “Oh, you’re serious?”

I nodded, wiggling closer, nuzzling as I began to place kisses at her shoulder.

“Some soldiers are simply born with… natural skill in certain areas,” I said.

She laughed, bright and pleased and surprised, her eyes crinkling and shrinking, the corners of her lips turned up in unfettered happiness.

“Don’t— _unh_ —Astra, you’re distracting me.”

“My apologies,” I replied as I continued to kiss her (though I was not sorry at all).

“I just… I mean, I had hinted that—that I was having feelings for someone at the shop. She asked me all the time why I was down here so much, and back then I just… I didn’t know what to say.”

I stopped kissing her shoulder and drew back, trying to concentrate on her story, trying to discover the source of her hesitancy.

“What to say about… about your behavior? _Our_ behavior?”

“I just…” she trailed off and brought a hand to her head, shoving the heel of it into her eye socket as if she might press the confusion away. “I never said you were a woman. Well, I mean… I told Kara there was someone, and she figured out when we… after we fought at Thanksgiving, that there wasn’t someone anymore. I just never told her you were a woman. I’ve never dated another girl before. That’s another element to all of this—I’d have to come out to my sister.”

After all that we had been through, the minor detail of my being a woman had never registered as being an issue in our relationship. But in my time on Earth, especially after speaking at length with Jeremiah, I discovered that same-sex relationships were still not wholly accepted, if not entirely taboo in certain areas. Perhaps I had lived too long, and seen too many cultures, to have given the subject significant consideration. But it was something Alex was slowly coming to terms with, something of import that she would have to reveal to Kara. And it was something I would support her in, in any way I could.”

“I realize that… that without having shown interest in women before, this might come as something of a surprise to her. By Rao, I was married for all of the time she knew me, so it might be a shock from me, as well,” I thought, recalling Kara’s formal interactions with Non during her early years. “But it is a discussion I am happy to lead, if you wish me to. Or to… facilitate, if you think it should come from you. I’ve lived in many different cultures, Alexandra, so perhaps it is easier for me to vocalize such desires. And do not discredit your sister—she’s visited many planets before, too, and should take such a declaration in stride.”

“It just seems like every crazy twist of fate is playing against us,” Alex countered. “It’s like… I didn’t just fall for someone, I fell for an alien. And not just any alien, but a Kryptonian. And not just any Krytonian, but a famous one.”

I snorted. “I was not famous.”

“Then powerful and noteworthy,” Alex continued. “You wanted to know how I knew all those titles of yours, Arclominian of the first Order and Brigadier General of the Soldiers of the Bastion Range? The Daxamite Destroyer? Kara rattles them off like a broken record when she talks about her _famous_ aunt Astra.”

I rolled my eyes but she twisted to face me, sitting up and taking the sheets with her. She hitched up one knee and propped her elbow on it, placed her chin in her hand and then looked down to face me with a knowing stare.

“Tell me I didn’t just fuck Krypton’s _It Girl_ , and I’ll stop with the anxious word-vomit.”

“I have been on this earth for more than a decade and your crude phrases still baffle me,” I muttered. “ _Word-vomit_. How utterly unappealing. And I was hardly some… some celebrity general, no matter what you think. As to your anxiety, you are speaking your concerns, Alexandra, how is that wrong?”

“I don’t want to burden you with everything that’s in my head.”

“On Krypton, a relationship was a partnership. That means burdens are shared. I would not be here if I was not willing to bear some of that weight, my darling.”

I moved up to sit beside her, and drew her mouth to my own. We kissed, reaffirming our affection, not our passion, which had already been sated that morning. The indolent, thorough exchange of kisses and hums seemed to soothe her, which had been my hope all along. Her eyes had blown wide and dark as she stared back at me, still in love, still afraid, but still so stunningly, gorgeously brave.

“You know, it is only me,” I reassured her. “Ashley was not a complete fabrication. I cannot be so… so intimidating. I could not even properly manage a Twitter feed, when you first met me.”

“It’s not that,” she insisted.

“Then what?”

“You’re just… you’re her aunt. And she’s my sister. To top it all off, you look just like—you look just like Alura." She turned away to stare blankly in front of her, worrying at her bottom lip. "What if I do something and it’s too uncomfortable for us to even be in the same room? What about Kara? What about… about Christmas and summer vacation and… and… I can’t mess this up, it’ll hurt too many people if I mess this—”

“Alex, no,” I insisted. “Do not speak of yourself that way, alright? We have to try. I cannot feel this way about you, and not try for fear. You are so brave, so righteously, _inhumanly_ brave, Alexandra. I’m so happy it was you. You are the only one who could’ve battled the demons with me.”

I pressed a kiss to her hair and placed my arm around her shoulders.

“If we have to… to fabricate some story to keep her ignorant of your work, then so be it, but as it stands…” I leaned in to kiss her cheek, mumbling in her ear. “I love you so, Alexandra. And we are… together, for lack of better terms. We will simply state that we dated, prior to knowing of your relation to Kara, and when you got your new job… it ended. But we’ve found our way back to each other. We’re trying again. And we must simply… hope for the best with her, I suppose.”

Alex remained silent for a moment, absorbing the statement. As she sat, hunched over her knees, holding my hand, I wondered what was going on in her brilliant brain, wondered exactly what she would redact, exactly what she would reveal. We would discuss it all, in granular detail, over the phone sometime that afternoon, because even within those truths, there were still lies we had to sustain.

“Sounds like as good a story as any,” she finally acquiesced, leaning into me as I drew up to kiss her. “But I might be a little late to dinner tonight. I’m doing mandated classes with human resources after-hours since I blew up at General Lane over you.”

“You are being subjected to more military paperwork for me?” I asked. “Please accept my deepest sympathies.”

“I’ll take all the paperwork in the world to have you here, you know,” she said, squeezing my hand tightly. “Just don’t get too wrapped up in everything with Kara before I get there. Help her cook, or something. Then maybe we can tag-team some of the story.”

“As we… _tag-teamed_ this morning?” I teased. “I’ll assume you want all initial conversations with your sister not to include my praise of you as a lover.”

“Please don’t,” she whined, a small, genuine smile bleeding over her features. “No matter how close we are, I’m wary about telling her her aunt is the best lay I’ve ever had.”

“Is that so?” I asked, feeling my lip quirk, my ego swell.

“…maybe,” she said, leaning back in to nudge at my nose. “Though I am a scientist, first and foremost. Perhaps we should make sure that one instance wasn’t an… an outlier?”

“Replicating… satisfactory results seems like the surest way to prove your hypothesis.”

“I’d tell you to strip off your lab coat, but you are already gloriously naked,” she mumbled, running her hand down my side. “And I don’t have to be on the road for another half-hour…”

“And my shift doesn’t start until nine.”

“Perfect conditions to run another experiment, in my expert opinion.”

“Then tend to your apparatus, Alexandra,” I said, settling back down on the bed as she crawled on top of me. “I expect no less than thoroughly satisfactory results.”

She placed her hand on my cheek and stared reverently down at me. “You expect quite a lot of me, you know?” she whispered, her tone hedging on the serious.

“I do,” I said, placing my hand on hers. “But that is because you are exceptional.”

Looking up at Alex, I wondered if she would ever believe it. I resolved in that moment to remind her, every day, just how amazing she was.

“I love you, Astra,” she told me, bending down, placing her forehead against mine.

“Alexandra,” I whispered, brushing my lips against hers. “I love you, too.”

 

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and here we have general astra in-ze, topping from the bottom and being stupidly in love with her brave one
> 
> anyway yall, the next (AND FINAL!) chapter won't be coming for a while just cause of my schedule, but I've got like a third of it worked up. thanks so much for sticking with this! This one has been a labor of love simply due to life being hectic and the crunch on my time, not being able to write even half as much as I used to. To all my general danvers, mjy and supercat peeps, keep fighting the good fight <3


	20. Chapter 20

Hours later, I found myself standing outside the same door I’d stood outside of about six months previously, laden with gifts and a hopeful heart. Tonight, all I brought with me was a bottle of wine for dinner, but my heart, despite it all, was still filled with hope.

Before my knuckles even rapped on the wooden surface, Kara had already sped over and wrenched the door open.

“Aunt Astra!”

“Kara,” I said, beaming back at her as she winced, looking towards her door hinges.

“Oops,” she muttered, lifting the door back and muttering about the hinge fixture, three screws holding the fitting in the brick wall miraculously loosened with just the minor exertion of her strength. It seemed Kara was easily excitable, just as she was as a child. “Hey, sorry, uh…” she opened one arm to me for something of a stilted hug, holding the door up with her other hand as she squeezed around my shoulders. “Just… uh, just a second…”

She sped off to a back room and returned with a Phillips head, floated about a foot off the ground and beared down and twisted so hard against the screws they might as well have been reinserted into the brick wall with a power drill.

“There,” she said, smiling at her handiwork. “Sorry, I’m still getting used to the place.”

“It’s fine,” I said, handing over a bottle Mordavian wine.

The drink was priceless, not that Kara would know, but M’gann had managed to save two crates of some of her prized liquors from the DEO raid. She would begin rebuilding her bar in a different corner of the city and slowly spread the news that she was open for business again, and I would aid her in that endeavor. Reaching out to any suppliers would be trying, now that she had her name on something of a watchlist. But M’gann was determined, and stubborn, and patient in a way that hundreds of years of life afforded, so I did not doubt that she would succeed.

“Oh, uh… thanks, Aunt Astra,” Kara said politely, taking the wine in hand and staring rather dumbly at the bottle. She smiled, then pivoted, turning to lead me back into her apartment.

It looked completely different from when I had been there briefly with Alex. The kitchen island where we had argued and then had…well, the kitchen island was still there, but new barstools, new rugs, and a larger dinner table and a vintage refrigerator had taken the place of all of Alex’s kitchen furnishings. Farther into the space were scattered, mismatched rugs and overlarge sofas draped with slip-covers; along the side wall stood a privacy screen behind which I assumed Kara housed her bed. Soft twinkling lights were strung up along the large, curtain-less windows, soaking up the red hues of the brick interior and bathing the entire space in a cozy, warm glow. It was nothing so harsh as the brutal white light Alex had woken up to on that post-Thanksgiving morning the previous year. The place suited Kara so much more than Alex, with artistic clutter and hand-me-down cutlery and what looked to be an original painted cityscape of… not Argo City, but maybe Kandor, hanging on the wall between the dining area and living quarters. The place seemed inviting, and warm, and cheerful—just like Kara.

“Alcohol doesn’t really—I mean, I don’t spend much on alcohol because it sorta tastes like expensive grape juice, but I bet Alex will enjoy it,” Kara said deferentially.

“You sister shouldn’t drink that,” I told her, which was exactly the reason M’gann gave it to me, probably. “It is not for human consumption.”

Kara turned over her shoulder from where she was perched at the stove, stirring something yellow-looking and creamy. “What?”

“It is Mordavian golden wine,” I explained, placing the bottle and its swirling, prismic colors into the light near the kitchen island. “Harvested from berries in the Pelios region. I have only ever had a glass or two at state functions with Pelion military leaders, but I supposed we should celebrate for the occasion. You… do not drink much, then?”

“I—uhm,” Kara’s mouth puckered in confusion, her focus returning to the sauce. “Human alcohol doesn’t really affect me, so I never saw the point. Then again, I never knew there were other… uh, options?”

“Best start with half a glass then,” I said, following Kara’s nod toward a cupboard where I extracted a pair of wine glasses. One looked to have been washed recently; the other collected dust. “If you’re anything like your mother, you’ll be drinking me under the table in no time.”

Kara’s jaw dropped open and the spoon splattered a bit of the sauce on her kitten-printed apron.

“You’re joking.”

“Pardon?”

“About mother!” Kara insisted. “She was never intoxicated around me!”

“She held her alcohol very well, Kara,” I said (to the point that I oftentimes worried it might get out of hand). It was how I recognized the signs with Alex so early on. Growing up and loving someone with that type of dependency took more patience than I ever believed I had.

“There’s no way… she had to—to—to be at all those dinners, locked up in her office—”

“Where there were many eyes to see her, and social expectations to uphold,” I said, glancing at the wine bottle. “So there was wine to be had, and deals to be made, and toasts with glasses to seal them. But when her caseload got too heavy, it was not uncommon to find Alura cloistered away, marking blurred annotations with a half-empty bottle of Ylltrux Whisky.”

“I guess these are the kinds of things an 11-year-old doesn’t really notice,” Kara said morosely.

“It wasn’t something you were supposed to notice. It never affected you, because Alura never let her drinking—pardon the pun—spill over into her duties as a mother. She would have never allowed that of herself,” I told her, knowing it was one of the most truthful statements I could say about my sister. Was she flawed? Certainly. And did Kara know, even the half of Alura’s weaknesses? Of course not. But I would not villainize Alura. I would not degrade her, either. Kara deserved the truth of her mother, and I was the only one who could give her that.

“Did Alura drink perhaps more than I believed necessary?” I asked, rhetorically. “Yes. But was she an… an addict? No, Kara, she wasn’t.”

Kara nodded and set the wooden spoon aside, and gravitated toward me like some rocky debris caught in a comet’s gravity.

“I miss her so much. All the time,” Kara said, burying her face in my neck. Spatters of sauce from her apron got on my shirt, but I hardly cared. I wrapped her up so tightly and thought of her mother, of Alura, the better half of me.

“Does it ever get easier?” she asked.

“I—”

I could have told her that the initial resentment made it easier. If she could find it in her heart to hate her mother, if only for a little while, she might be able to unseat the grief. But soon, once that hot anger faded to understanding, that grief would return. Alura, in all of her years and planning on the council, never once shirked her responsibilities with Kara. She was at every awards ceremony, and aided her with her drills during Instruction. She was maternal and kind and wise and just and loving; she was everything I wished for Kara to be, and the mother I hoped to one day become with Rodi.

“I don’t know, Kara,” I answered. “I wish… I wish times were easier, like back on Krypton, when your problems were simpler. But now… now I do not have all of the answers. I can share the grief with you, Little One, but I cannot take it away altogether.”

I squeezed her shoulders tighter, and she nodded into me. I felt the hot rock of sadness lodge in my throat once again, and there seemed to be nothing else to say on the subject. After one long, solemn moment, Kara withdrew from my embrace, swiping at tears that had congregated in the corner of her blue eyes. She shook her head and held a hand aloft, whispered _I’m fine_ , and turned back toward the counter to collect herself.

“Where did you get that?” she asked, changing the subject, motioning toward the Mordavian wine. She cleared her throat and took another look at the sauce, adding in a sprinkle of salt.

“From a friend,” I responded, glad of the change in tone. “She knows how… she knows how long I’ve been looking for you, and she wanted it to be special.”

“Was it an… alien, friend?”

“Yes,” I responded.

“Oh, well… duh, I guess,” Kara said, pushing her glasses farther up her nose and leaning back against the stove. Her hand was millimeters away from the burner and her shirt sleeve seconds away from catching fire.

“Kara,” I said gently, raising my brows toward her wrist.

“Oh, yeah! I…uh…”

“—didn’t feel it,” I replied, smirking. The number of times I’d had to feign some sort of pain after being ‘burned’ by the espresso steam might have garnered me an acting nomination in one of the human’s silly media pieces. “I do that all the time.”

Kara was staring at the ground, her expression thoughtful.

“Little One?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”

I passed over the glass of wine to her, half-full, bubbling and effervescent, a Mordavian equivalent to human’s champagne. She studied it curiously before sniffing at it, and tentatively grasped the bowl of the glass with both hands.

“I’ve been so focused on blending in with the humans I never considered going to look for… for other people like me. I might’ve found you sooner,” she said sadly, running her fingers round the lip of the glass, then down, finally resting to clutch uncertainly at the wine glass stem. “Maybe that’s why I missed you, all this time, when you were less than a mile away. Why I haven’t met other aliens… people who… who feel the same way I do. Who know the loss…”

“You’ve done what needed doing,” I told her, trying to dispel such a self-pitying line of thought.

The night was off to an emotional start, and Alex hadn’t even arrived yet. “Because while there are other aliens out there, doing their best to… to ‘blend in’, like you did, do not forget there are a host of others who would do harm to you, or to the people of this planet. You know better than most, given what Kal-El has chosen to become to this world. With his enemies, and your connections, it has been for the best that you have remained hidden.”

“I knew that there were other aliens, but I never supposed…” Kara blinked back tears, haloed in the soft glow of her kitchen.

She set the glass aside on the countertop and stared at it, mesmerized.

“I never knew there could be wine, or… or that I could have friends, who are alien—like you do! You must know so much more about… about the species who come here because you—you didn’t hide from your powers. You embraced them.”

“I stand by what I said yesterday,” I told her, careful to take a diplomatic stance on the subject.

It was one thing to use her powers to gain some small advantage; it was another to be seen as extraordinary, or inhumanly exceptional.

“Your powers are an advantage. You should not fear them, or hide them. But I caution you, Kara. If you wish to know more of the aliens on this earth, do not allow your desire for camaraderie blind you to beings who would do you harm, who would take advantage of your light.”

I poured myself a glass of wine and tucked the corkscrew away into a side drawer, wondering how many similar conversations we would have in future, about Kara’s actions, about alien policy in the U.S., and in the world, about the necessity of secret identities. For Kara especially, but then eventually… for me as well.

“Yes, I know other aliens,” I continued. “But I also led a prison full of criminals who are all out there, somewhere, and they are not good souls. Knowing the daughter of the High Council’s favored judge survived and lives on the same planet they have somehow found themselves upon would place a large target on your back. This secret you’ve crafted—Kara Danvers—she is important as well.”

“You sound just like my sister,” Kara said, straightening from her relaxed position over the stove, moving to stir the sauce she had prepared once more with a wooden spoon. “I was holding that glass up but I had no idea what to toast to.”

“Cat called the shop and told me the good news,” I offered. “Perhaps we should toast to your new position.”

“She also put me to work immediately after I got done with the interview, which canceled our coffee date this afternoon,” Kara’s eyebrows rose knowingly. “Was that indicative of things to come?”

“If I know Cat, then yes, she will work you mercilessly,” I responded truthfully. “But she is a powerful woman with connections that could help you in your journey, Kara. It would bode well for you to be in her good graces.”

(Because even if I could not protect Kara from harm, Cat Grant certainly had the connections and wherewithal to protect Kara as best as humanly possible).

“I… I’m going to try, at any rate,” Kara said, reaching for the glass again. “Aunt Astra, you said Ms. Grant didn’t see you use your powers, when you saved her that day her driver got killed at your shop.”

“…right,” I answered, even though it was something of a half-truth. Cat hadn’t seen me use my powers that day because she had already seen me fly when we were snooping through Roulette’s warehouse.

“And you consider her a… friend?”

“I suppose so,” I answered, wondering at her line of questioning.

“Don’t you think it’s weird that the people we’re closest to don’t know what— _who_ we are?” Kara asked. “I just… I understand that not everyone can know, and thank Rao for Alex and the Danvers’, but it’s just… it’s _hard_ keeping it a secret. How do you and Ms. Grant get on if she doesn’t know you’re… you?”

“Kara, it’s a secret worth keeping. I dare not draw attention to myself and have some wayward Fort Rozz inmate come looking for his lost leader. If that means Cat or others I come into contact with do not know the full extent of my abilities, then so be it.”

“It feels like a lie.”

“A necessary one.”

“I hate that,” Kara pouted. “You can justify almost anything if you think its _necessary_.”

I drew a deep breath, because I had used that same bit of reasoning, doing what had ultimately led to my arrest and the charges against me on Krypton. I had had this same argument with Alex hours before, running over our story, trying to figure out just what we would say to Kara.

The job. Alex’s new job. That’s why we broke up, it’s why we didn’t stay together. It was a _necessary_ lie, to spare Kara pain, to spare her hurt, to keep her safe. It wasn’t the full truth, but it wasn’t completely _un_ true, either.

“Why not toast to… to who we really are, then,” Kara suggested. “I used my powers today, trying to get the job. The x-ray vision, the hearing… I wasn’t flying around the copy room or anything, but saving Ms. Grant forty-five seconds seemed to impress her well enough. And even though not many people can know… we can toast to our truth.”

“The truth…” I echoed, wondering if I had it in me to toast to that, knowing what was to come when Alex walked through that door. “Yes, I… I think some truths need sharing this night.”

We bumped our glasses together and they didn’t shatter, both of us too wary of broken shards on the floor to toast with too much carelessness.

“It’s nothing like the Guild Ceremonies back home,” Kara said wistfully, and I squeezed her arm to let her know I understood. “But getting health insurance with a new gig is basically a right-of-passage for most people my age nowadays.”

I laughed, boldly, and took another sip of the wine before me. It warmed me, and reminded me of home even though it wasn’t a wine that I ever had on Krypton. After honing my palette to earth food and drink for over a decade, the taste seemed positively alien, which I had come to associate with all things that reminded me of home.

We spoke a little longer of Kara’s new duties with Cat, of my shop, and my understanding of part-time work for college students, livable wages, soft-skills and the back-channels of communication in National City, ones that could help us acquire alien alcohol. It was strange, speaking with Kara about such matters. Last I could recall, Alura would not even let Kara stay at table longer than her bed time allowed, even when officers of the court were dining with her and Zor-El. I was the one to tuck Kara into her bed on most of those nights because Alura had to play hostess, but now… I was discussing different drinks for different occasions, ones that came from different planets and what Kara might prefer. My time in the Phantom Zone as well as the advanced metabolism and re-energizing sun on earth had somewhat stalled my aging. I felt the same age, physically, as I did the day I was sentenced. But Kara… Kara was a woman grown, and it was disconcerting and happy and astounding, all at once.

Kara reached for the wine bottle and poured herself a glass that was even bigger than her first. With no food yet in her stomach I cautioned her, but she rolled her eyes at me, much as she might have done at the imagined ceremonies and celebrations she might’ve attended as she aged, had Krypton survived… had _we_ survived with it. But tonight was special, in its own small, simple way. The light, cheerful feeling the wine and fellowship provided helped stem the flow of anxiety for the harder conversations that I knew were soon to come.

“Gosh, Alex is super late,” Kara muttered, polishing off her glass. She turned the oven off to keep the sheet pan dinner of vegetables and pork-chops warm, having given up some time ago on the congealing hollandaise sauce atop the back burner. “I’ll bet she wouldn’t mind if we started without her.”

“Kara, where are your manners?” I said, nearly gagging on my words because I sounded like Alura incarnate. I shrugged the notion off, chocking it up to the wine. “She’ll finish the paperwork with HR and be here as soon as she can. Rao knows she hardly heeds the traffic warnings on that death-trap of a motor-bike.”

Kara’s hand paused in its journey, searching for the neck of the wine bottle. The glazed, shimmery look in her eyes grew wetter, her expression muddled and pinched.

“…w-what?”

“What?” I echoed rather dumbly, blinking against the effects of the wine and knowing, suddenly, with that swooping sensation in my stomach, that bringing the wine tonight had been a tremendously poor idea.

I told Alex that if the subject of our knowing each other came up before she arrived, I would not deny it. I would not expound upon it, either, but the wine made me a bit too bold for my own sense. Perhaps, what with living under constant surveillance and Alex’s future with the DEO so tenuous, it was my own form of self-imposed sabotage; some little bit of control I could exert by distributing small amounts of information to Kara in my own, gradual way, instead of dropping a bomb-shell on her all at once when her sister arrived. However, now that the proverbial cat was out of the bag, I felt ill-prepared to handle the forthcoming questions alone.

“You know about Alex’s job?” Kara asked, rubbing the heel of her hand beneath her glasses and into the socket of her eye, the wet look becoming clearer as she attempted to focus more intently. “You know _Alex_?”

“Yes, I—I’ve actually known your sister for quite some time,” I confessed, shrugging one shoulder and moving toward the sink from my perch in one of Kara’s overstuffed chairs. I had only one more swallow of wine in the glass, but priceless or not, I knew I did not need those last few ounces to continue with the conversation.

“I, uh…” Kara followed me into the kitchen, her cheery, congenial attitude grown more critical after I offered up that bit of information. “You didn’t say anything yesterday.”

“I didn’t really know how to,” I answered, which was the truth. “I met Alexandra a very long time ago, at the shop, completely by chance. She mentioned a sister, but I didn’t know it was you.”

“Alex— _Alexandra_?”

“Yes?”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, I… it’s been years,” I expounded. “Alex was one of my best customers while she was in grad school. She was always running, studying, pushing herself, at all hours of the night—”

“Sounds exactly like her,” Kara mumbled.

“Your… assessment of her yesterday, her hair, when she cut it… and all those silly leather jackets—you know, it wasn’t even cold outside,” I turned on the faucet and rinsed out the wine glass. I dumped the water, and ran a soft cloth over the lip of its bowl. I upended it beside the sink onto the drying pad, wishing Alex would arrive, wishing I might have something else to do before all of the questions set in.

“Very rock-n’-roll, as you said,” I replied.

“So you two were—are—friends?”

“Yes,” I answered, but that wasn’t anything, wasn’t _half_ of what Alex was to me. “Although… that’s not entirely true. We’re not friends.”

“Oh, uh, then acquaintances,” Kara said, her face still somewhat scrunched together. “I mean, you’re both probably as friendly as you could be, as customers and workers at a coffee place are to each other. When I was at Noonan’s I definitely had my favorites… big tippers whose families I’d ask after, y’know? You must’ve been close enough to her if you heard her mention a sister.”

“Yes, we... Kara, I don’t want you to misunderstand, your sister and I were— _are_ —very close.”

_Close_ was hardly the word I would use for two people who’d nearly killed each other. Who’d saved each other. Who’d made love that morning and who’d fought tooth and nail for each other’s approval. _Close_ was inadequate and yet, there was no other way to make Kara understand beyond dealing with generic, inarticulate adjectives like ‘close’ and ‘friendly’ when speaking of Alex.

When speaking of her without her _there_.

“Alex doesn’t really make friends easy, Aunt Astra,” Kara said. There was a note of protection implied in the statement, along with the quiet strength I would expect from someone born of the House of El. “It’s weird she never mentioned you.”

“But she did.”

“Sorry?”

“ _Ashley Green_ ,” I said, chewing on the inside of my jaw. But Kara just stared back blankly. “Or… maybe she didn’t,” I amended. “That was my alias, remember? I just—told people my name was Ashley, so that’s how Alex must’ve known me.”

“Ashley… Ashley— _oh_! Yeah, I remember her mentioning an Ashley before,” Kara smiled a little at that, pieces clicking into place. “The owner…but that was like—a year or two ago, like you said. She raved about the place back then, said you really knew what you were doing.”

“Did she?”

“Yeah! I thought it was so weird, she started talking about getting a streak of color in her hair because… well, now I know why!” Kara laughed, pointing at the shock of white that ran down from my temple. “Talk about rock ‘n roll,” Kara giggled, the wine having addled her mind to a high sort of giddiness. “Alex was such an angsty poser.”

“I don’t know about that,” I said carefully, smiling at Kara’s delight despite my hesitation. “She was just… always there. And very helpful.”

“Helpful?” Kara questioned. “How so?”

“It’s just…when I was first starting the shop, she helped to set up all of my social media pages. Our Facebook, Twitter feed, our Instagram tags, I was completely lost to the world of social media marketing,” I explained, thinking back to those easy, safe nights.

Alex, sitting on the picnic table outside the shop, bathed in the glow from the twinkle lights strung up round the exterior. Alex, reaching for her NASA mug on the shelf. Alex, leaning over her homework with pencil marks smudged on her cheeks, looking beautiful, and young, and whole. She was so gorgeous then, so… perfect. I thought of that night we danced a silent dance in the shop, the night I first kissed her; how warm her skin felt, beneath her shirt, how her heart thudded so quickly, every time I brushed my lips against her own.

I jolted myself from memory, fearful of dwelling on those early days too long, should Kara take note of my sentiment. Instead, I continued with my story: “She was a grad student who was, frankly, rather addicted to the coffee, so…”

“…so she helped you out,” Kara finished for me. “To be completely honest, Aunt Astra, that doesn’t… that doesn’t sound like Alex at all. I mean, she’s helpful, don’t get me wrong, just… seems like something out of her comfort zone. To partner up with a stranger, especially someone not… in her field, I guess? It would’ve been different if you had been one of her professors, or another TA, or something.”

“Handing over the marketing portion and learning about the different platforms was a challenge for me,” I confessed. “Alex… made it easier.”

“It’s just so weird,” Kara said. “You two… knowing each other for that long, never… never realizing—”

“And we didn’t, we didn’t realize, Kara—”

“—that I was here this whole time.”

A knock sounded at the door, and Kara and I both stared through the wood.

“Speak of the devil,” Kara said, zipping across the apartment to welcome her sister. “Alex!”

“Hey, sorry I’m late,” Alex hurried in, tossing her briefcase down by the door and swinging a bottle in a brown paper bag under her arm as she embraced Kara. “Work… stuff, and traffic wasn’t great.”

“Yeah,” Kara beamed, tossing her hair over her shoulder as she turned back to me, then back to her sister. “You hungry?”

“Yeah, starving. Astra, hey,” Alex waved, somewhat stilted, catching my gaze from across the room. She noted the opened bottle of wine at my side, and then turned back to her sister. “Kara… are you… tipsy?”

“Huh?” she asked, skipping over toward the oven and bumping me with her hip to scoot me out of the way, reaching inside it to withdraw the steaming vegetables and pork-chop laden cookie-sheet full of food. “Nah, I’m just…”

“Tipsy,” I confirmed, crossing toward Alex, not quite knowing what the proper protocol was for greeting her given Kara’s limited knowledge. “I brought Mordavian wine.”

“To share?” Alex asked, stopping just short of hugging me, her arm twitching, as if she might… shake my hand?

“Not with you,” I answered, looking fondly over at my niece as she hovered in the air, snatching three plates down from the cupboards. “I’m afraid there wouldn’t be much left of your esophagus if you drank that wine.”

“Well, I’m not sharing, either,” Alex said with a smirk, withdrawing her own bottle of Cabernet from the bag.

“Dinner’s ready!” Kara announced, placing her hands on her hips, and then shortly, losing a humorous battle with the ties of her apron. Alex snorted and yanked the strings over her head before moving in front of Kara to start preparing her plate.

“Alex, we have a guest!” Kara said, scandalized. “She should go first.”

“I’ve seen you both eat. If I let either one of you go first, there won’t be any left for me.”

I smiled, conceding the point. If Kara had half the appetite I did (I was wrong; she had double the appetite I did), Alex would not be eating anything that evening.

“You can’t help metabolism, Alexandra,” I teased.

“Meanwhile, you both eat to fill your bottomless pits of stomachs, and I’m sweating my ass off at the gym every morning,” Alex said casually, as if we’d been here thousands of time before, the three of us, together, talking about nonsense dinners and Kryptonian physiques. “And there’s no way in hell that I’m ever going to get Kryptonian abs—”

“ _Alex_ ,” I said warily, but Kara must not have been paying attention, or even registered the implication.

“What kind of HR paperwork did you have to fill out?” Kara asked, making polite conversation.

“What?” Alex returned, talking more to her plate than to her sister, rather geniusly avoiding her gaze by pretending to be focused on the food. Perhaps Alex had learned a bit more from the DEO than I originally supposed.

“Astra said you had to do something with HR paperwork, and that you might be late,” Kara explained, stepping up behind Alex to begin preparing a plate for me. “Aunt Astra, do you like asparagus?”

“Yes, I do,” I said, watching as Kara spooned asparagus and tomatoes and chopped whole red potatoes onto my plate, before handing it all over, along with a large pork chop seasoned rather expertly with lemon pepper. Alex was doing battle with the corkscrew, her own plate left at one of the place settings of the table Kara had quite obviously worked very hard on decorating.

“It looks lovely in here, Kara,” I said, looking back toward the table. “And the meal, delicious.”

“Not quite as nice as when mother used to host the Council, but it’ll do,” Kara perked up. “What about your paperwork, Alex?”

“Half-year review stuff,” Alex lied expertly. “Stuff to go over to make sure I’m on track in the lab, all current projects up to snuff.”

“Oh yeah, they mentioned that in my HR meeting this afternoon. Half-year review. After all the pitying glances when they found out what position I got. I don’t get the feeling they think I’ll last half the year,” Kara muttered, finally handing over a plate to me and picking up her own. “You two go ahead, start while it’s hot!”

“Wait, HR?” Alex asked. “So… you got the job at CatCo?”

“I did!” Kara answered, beaming. “I never would’ve gotten it without Aunt Astra, though.”

“I’ll remember to blame you when her crazy boss lady makes her cry,” Alex grumbled at me.

“She’ll do nothing of the sort,” I reassured her. “She’ll push Kara, as well she needs to. But Cat is never outright cruel.”

Alex arched a skeptical brow before picking up her fork. I sat at her left side and placed my hand on her leg under the table, just to remind her I was there, and that we were in this, whatever this was, together. She shot me a warning look and made a quick motion around her eyes, nodding towards her sister’s turned back. Kara’s spoon was hovering dejectedly over the ruined sauce.

“I think Ms. Grant will pose a challenge, but I’m ready for it,” Kara said, abandoning the pot on the stove. “I feel like I just floated through undergrad, never really made my mark in clubs or in campus organizations.”

“Good,” Alex said, poking the tines of her fork in the air for emphasis.

“But it’s time to figure out what I can really do,” Kara persisted, grabbing her dinner napkin as she sauntered across the kitchen. “CatCo is a wonderful company, with a pro-alien stance. I could make connections and really start helping people there.”

“For now, you’ll help Cat, though,” I told her, keeping her lofty dreams in check. “It is good to have a plan for the future, Kara, but do not let future possibilities overwhelm your dedication to the current objective.”

Kara nodded thoughtfully, placing her plate down to finally join us at the table. She might think my philosophy a bit too militaristic, but the advice did apply quite well to her current situation.

“Well, enough about me and my lofty goals,” she said, tossing her dinner napkin in her lap with a bit more carefree aim than I think she would’ve used if she’d been more sober. “How long has this been going on?” she asked, waving her fork between us.

There was a gurgle, a loud _crack!_ , and a snort emitted from mine and Alex’s side of the table. She was mid-gulp and choked on her wine, and I was so flabbergasted by the question I sawed right through the plate with the dinner knife.

“ _Blehktl_ ,” I swore, and Kara’s eyes danced with amusement.

Alex couldn’t stop coughing, so I poured her some water from the pitcher and moved the glass closer. I looked down at the broken plate and tried to lift it, keeping the vegetable juices from pouring over the edge and staining the place mat.

“I’m so sorry Kara, I didn’t mean to—”

“Oh, that’s fine, I do that all the time to the plates,” Kara said, rising and zipping toward the top cupboard, which I soon realized, was full of mismatched plates with nicks and cracks around the edges. “I go clean out the Goodwill about once every six months because none of the plates can really survive me when I get hungry. Or the cutlery, for that matter.”

I looked down at my fork and knife, noting the mismatch. Alex had finally gotten her breathing under control, and that was when I looked at the pitcher, and the water glasses, and the serving dishes. _Nothing_ matched. It must be so expensive, I thought, trying to contain that strength at the least note of excitement. Kara had nearly taken her door off the hinges when I arrived—I wonder just how many bowls had seen their end upon the presentation of a carton of Ben and Jerry’s Half-Baked.

“Sorry, I—sorry,” Alex gasped, patting her mouth with her napkin like a maniac. “Went down the wrong pipe.”

“Alex, I was going to ask how long you and Astra had been friends, but this is more important,” Kara sighed. “Sorry to get into this on your first night here, Aunt Astra.”

I remained silent, looking back and forth between the two sisters.

“What are you talking about?” Alex asked.

“Like… what has been with you these past two weeks?” Kara asked, holding Alex’s questioning gaze. “You’ve been in a weird mood… it’s not a funk, just, you’re acting strange.”

“How do you mean?” Alex asked, propping her hand stiffly on the back of the chair, trying to make the pose seem natural when it was very, very much _not_ natural.

“It’s just been hard to get a read on you, recently. You’re not answering your phone until crazy hours at night.”

“Work’s been really intense lately, Kara, you know that,” Alex said, a little defensively.

“To the point of not answering me for… for actual days?”

Alex huffed, dropping from her strange position on the chair to properly face her sister. She took a gulp of wine before continuing:

“The first year with this company is extremely intense. They’re vetting the weaker projects and the weaker scientists. I told you I’m using this semester as my dissertation _through_ this company, so yes, Kara, I’m sorry I didn’t call you back.”

“What if it had been an emergency?” Kara argued.

“I would’ve known.”

“How?”

“I just…” Alex heaved a bigger sigh, because I knew how Alex would’ve known if anything had happened to Kara.

A Kryptonian in National City? Alex had probably made use of the DEO’s best equipment to keep tabs on her sister. That, or simply activated the shared location settings on Kara’s phone.

“…you’re right, I guess. I’ll try to do better.”

“Thank you,” Kara said, handing over the wine bottle when Alex made grabby-hands at it. “It still doesn’t explain your mood swings, though.”

“What about my mood?” Alex asked, again, on the defensive.

Kara looked back and forth between us, her brow furrowing the longer she thought.

“Aunt Astra, I’m sorry, but I’ve… uhm, I might’ve said some things about you that painted you in a bad light. Some good things! But also, well… the last thing I knew about you was that you were sentenced to prison. And that might have colored my explanations about my family to Alex.”

“What does my past have to do with Alex?” I asked.

“I’m just… trying to piece things together, especially right now, tonight. With Alex. And you. ”

“Why right now?” Alex asked.

“Because you’re acting so normal now!” Kara said, flustered.

“Is that a _bad_ thing?” Alex retorted. “You’re the one who just told me to be on best behavior for company.”

"Three days ago you were sadder than I've seen you in months."

"That's..." Alex mumbled. "That's not--bad news at work, is all. I'm fine now. I'm good."

“No, you're not good. Compared to the last two weeks, you're bad,” Kara snipped back. “First, you go MIA for seventy-two hours; then the next minute you’re on Cloud 9, then you’re down in the pits, and now, when I tell you that my aunt, the Kryptonian General sentenced to Fort Rozz for _treason,_ just so happens to be your—what? favorite barista?—you’re… fine? With all of it? Just finishing up paperwork at the office and it’s a normal family dinner like usual? You haven’t asked her a single question since you got here!”

“I…uh,” Alex looked back at me, but I wasn’t really any help. I couldn’t know what Kara knew about Alex, or what Kara knew about _me_ and Alex. “What am I supposed to ask her?”

“You held Tyler Kerrigan’s head under a running faucet until he agreed to bring me home by eleven for senior prom. And you didn’t even live in Midvale at that point!”

“I got off for that, Mom said it wasn’t _technically_ waterboarding—”

“Who is Tyler Kerrigan and what did he do to you?” I asked, standing quietly from my place at the table. “Where does he live?”

“No, Aunt Astra,” Kara said, shaking her head. “It’s not like that, just some guy from high school—”

“Who was a complete douche to Kara,” Alex finished for her.

“This isn’t about me,” Kara argued.

“ _I_ didn’t date Tyler,” Alex snarked.

“This isn’t about Tyler!”

“Then what is it about, Little One?” I asked, trying to steer the conversation back on track.

“You!” Kara said, slumping back in her seat. “Or, I don’t know, the pair of you, I guess. It’s just weird to me you… I just can’t get over the fact that you’ve known each other for _years_. And when Alex came in, just a second ago, you two were… I don’t know, bantering, or something. Is that what three years of lattes gets you? Even after finding out all the stuff you were accused of, Aunt Astra? I’m surprised Alex hasn’t put you in a headlock yet.”

“I would very much like to see her try,” I replied.

“Hey!” Alex said, her eyes narrowing playfully at me.

Kara stared at us, perplexed, as if we two were a foreign species of animal behind glass at one of the human zoos, and she just could not make sense of our behaviors.

“It’s just… I know my sister, and she should be flipping tables right now, trying to keep you away from me.”

“I’m not drunk enough for this,” Alex muttered reaching for her wine glass.

“Oh, no you don’t,” I intercepted her, snatching her glass away. “Alexandra…” I said, taking a deep breath and looking toward her hand on the table. I had avoided touching her since brushing my fingers against her leg earlier, but this… this seemed crucial.

She nodded infinitesimally, her jaw clenching as I brought my hand up to lay on top of hers.

“Kara,” I said, turning back to face my niece.

Her eyes bugged at our touching hands, heartbeat suddenly yammering at the pace of an Olympian on some performance-enhancing drug.

“We… I told you we were not quite friends, Alex and I,” I tried, carefully, gradually. “That is because Alex and I—we—we _were_ good friends, in the beginning of all this, because we didn’t know anything other than what we… well, what we presented to the world.”

“Why are you holding hands?” Kara inquired, expression vacillating between dumbfounded and disgusted. She said she had not used her powers in a long time, but I wondered if that laser-beam look might activate if she glared any harder at us.

“She was just a grad student, the name ‘Danvers’…” I shook my head, trying to articulate what I knew back then. Or perhaps, the lack of what I knew back then. “That didn’t mean anything to me, at the time.”

“Why are you holding hands?” Kara asked again, a little lower this time, clutching her fork in hand so hard the metal warped between her fingers.

“And I was at the shop a lot and she was—she always got my coffee order right,” Alex chimed in. “Some days, I didn’t even say a word, but she would have it ready for me.” She leaned forward over the table and clutched at my fingers all the harder. I felt her pulse quicken as well, felt the tension in the room ratchet up a dozen notches.

“Alex,” Kara grumbled, shutting her eyes momentarily. She repeated her question slowly, one last time: “Why are you holding my aunt’s hand?”

The beat passed, the silence pressed, but I could not stand it for longer than twenty seconds.

“We’re dating,” I blurted out, unsure if that was even the correct phrase for what was happening between us.

“You’re… _dating_?” Kara repeated, eyes still closed, warped fork now a mangled glob of metal in her palm.

“Kara, please understand, this was… it was neither of our intentions…” I tried, worried now, very worried, because Kara’s eyes looked red, maybe from the drink, maybe from the glare of the lasers that lived behind her pupils, or, worst of all, maybe from tears engendered by some sort of unspoken betrayal.

“You’re married,” Kara snapped at me, eyes popping open to reveal watery, unshed tears held in check through… anger? Disappointment? Shock? “Non-Ur, remember him? I knew… I knew even when I was younger, you didn’t… you didn’t love him like Mother loved Father. But you’re not… you’re not _dating_.”

“No, Kara,” Alex said. “We’ve never… we’ve never said it like that, but yeah. We’re dating.”

“Astra,” Kara stared at me, and it was an expression I’d never seen her wear before. Judgmental. Older. Foreign from that of an eleven-year-old who had only ever idolized me before. “Astra, you broke a vow.”

I didn’t quite expect that line of rebuttal, so it took me a moment to formulate a counter argument. Alura had always been the adjudicator in the family, not I. Alex turned back to me and brought her other hand up to mine. It helped, a little, but I could hear the quiet gasp Kara breathed from only a few feet away.

“Non was… is… immaterial, to how I feel for your sister,” I said. “He was my husband on Krypton and we shared a bond, but that bond is dead; just like the planet that sanctified it. I have not seen him in over a decade. You moved on with your life, Kara, can you really begrudge me for moving on with my own?”

“That’s not—that’s not what this is about,” Kara muttered, wiping at her eyes. “Alex?”

“Yeah?” Alex responded, ready for her emotional pummeling.

“You’re…” Kara seemed to have trouble phrasing whatever it was she was about to say. She set the mangled fork aside and stared at the table for a few seconds, fighting with her brain over which words to choose: “Alex, you’re… you’re not gay, right? You would’ve told me if… if…if you were, uh… attracted to women.”

“Uhm… I mean,” Alex blushed a little, and I felt her palms grow sweaty in my grip. “If this morning was any indication—”

“Alex, be serious,” I chastised her.

“Oh, Rao,” Kara said, finally standing up, placing her hands on her lower back. “You didn’t… you… this morning?! I… I just, just give me a minute, okay?”

She yanked the chair out from underneath her and started pacing, her footsteps falling heavier than a normal human’s, powerful enough to make the floorboards creak. I wondered if she was disturbing her neighbors in the apartment below, or if they might be worried, should Kara’s foot smash through their ceiling.

“Kara,” Alex said, squeezing my hand one last time before rising. “Maybe you and I should go out on the balcony for a minute?”

“There’s no point,” Kara said, shaking her head. “She can hear every word we say, even if we’re out there. Might as well keep this—whatever kind of conversation this is—going.”

“Right, that’s… uh, right,” Alex agreed, somewhat at a loss. “What will make this easier for you? What can we—uh, answer? Are you… angry?”

Kara halted in her tracks and looked up at her sister, who was, herself, on the verge of tears. Alex had her fist curled and she was pressing her knuckles against her lips, trying to stop herself from talking, trying to let Kara speak her peace.

“I’m…” Kara looked toward the ceiling, and another tear fell. “I’m… not angry,” Kara said. “I’m… confused,” she admitted, placing her hands on her hips again, not quiet knowing what to do with her arms, with her body, with the discomfort wracking her entire form. “I’m… to be honest, a little blind-sided, which takes a lot, for me, you know,” she said, motioning toward her eyes and then around the room. It produced a grin from Alex, which seemed somewhat positive. “And I think I’m… I’m a little hurt. And I shouldn’t feel hurt, because this is not about me—”

“But it is about you, Kara,” I replied, standing. “We’re… this happened without your knowledge, because we didn’t know who each other was, in relation to you—”

“And that’s exactly _why_ it’s not about me,” Kara insisted. “From what you’re saying… this—”

Kara made a vague motion toward the pair of us, as I stepped up beside Alex and laid my hand on the small of her back.

“—happened completely independently of me. I just—Alex has never _not_ told me about someone she liked. To be fair, she hasn’t really been seeing that many people recently, or at least I thought…” Kara trailed off a bit, searching for her words, but I knew the feeling.

I knew it so well.

“It is strange not knowing everything about your sister,” I spoke for her. “Especially when you are so close. Alura and I… I understand, Little One,” I mumbled, trying to relate, trying to give voice to the not-quite-hurt that occurs when something is kept secret by someone so close.

“Yeah, that sounds right,” Kara shrugged. “It’s just strange, being on the outside of it. And with _you_ , of all people! I hear how selfish that sounds, to you both, but Alex…” Kara looked at me with shining tears in her eyes, and I remembered the day I returned home to a sparkling spy beacon, the day Kara was quickly dismissed from her room, after Alura had tricked me into returning, and had used Kara to do it.

She had looked so _sad_ that day. So perplexed. So young.

So similar to how she looked now.

“I just got her back, and come to find out—you’ve had her all along,” Kara whispered, shaking her head. “I’m sorry, I… just, sorry.”

“That’s not true, completely, I think. I only…. only had, uh, parts of her,” Alex confessed. “I was… for the longest time, I thought she was Ashley Green, Ph.D. student and coffee shop owner. That’s who I—uhm, that’s who I fell for, Kara, was Ashley. But then I… I figured out…”

I told Alex that morning that I would follow her lead on whatever she chose to disclose to Kara. Short of the injuries I had sustained from Roulette and the DEO, I was prepared to tell Kara all that had transpired since my arrival on earth, and yet, I didn’t want to scare her. I didn’t know how much or how little Alex wanted to reveal pertaining to our relationship, but what she had revealed tonight was already more than I supposed she would.

“What do you mean?” Kara asked.

“Do you remember, last Thanksgiving, when I mentioned I might be bringing a friend over after mom left?” Alex said.

“Last Thanksgiving?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, you… that didn't pan out. You kinda went radio silent after that, with the new job and all.”

“I know,” Alex said, staring down at her shoes. “But the job wasn’t the only reason I went radio silent. It was Astra,” she said, stepping even closer to me, if that was possible. “I mean… that’s when I figured out…”

“Alex, what are you doing?” I asked her, wondering just how much she was willing to confess, just how open she wanted to be with Kara.

“She needs to know,” Alex mumbled.

“I agree, but… now? This is… it might be too much for her.”

“The truth hurts, as cliché as that sounds,” Alex agreed. “But I’ve got to let her grow up a little, Astra. We can’t… no, _I_ can’t keep lying to her.”

“I’m confused… this has been going on since Thanksgiving?” Kara asked, her face drawn and more than a little flushed. "You and... uh, _Ashley_?" She brought a hand to her temple and I suspected she was experiencing the beginnings of a headache. An unfamiliar, annoying discomfort, especially given the gravity of the conversation.

No more wine for Kara, then.

“No,” Alex corrected her. “We only just… we only recently reconnected, in the last few weeks. But it’s real Kara, I want you to understand that.”

“Okay, fine, you’re dating,” Kara said, hands migrating to cross over her chest. “It’s just going to… to take some getting used to, I think.”

“Yes, but… it’s more than that,” Alex insisted. “Kara, I… I love her. Astra, not Ashley. I’m in love with Astra and… and I think I have been for a very long time.”

Kara’s tears finally broke over the edge of her eyelids and streamed over her face. I felt my own eyes grow hot from tears, and could see Alex crying silently, her hand held over her mouth, standing before her sister, seeking judgment. It was all terribly, awfully familiar, but I had hope for a better outcome than the last time one sister stood before another, seeking a verdict.

“But I… I did just what you said, Kara, when I found out who she was. Flipped tables…” Alex huffed. “Metaphorically.”

“When you… found out…” Kara repeated, piecing everything together in fits and starts of strained, disconcerted understanding. “Alex, you—you’ve been seeing her… for years—”

“Yes,” Alex said.

“How long have you known… who she was to me?” Kara asked, her lip quivering, the emotion in her eyes so apparent, so desperate, so hopeful to _not_ hear the words she knew she was going to hear.

“Since that time at Thanksgiving. Just about… six months,” Alex confessed, hanging her head low as Kara’s tears poured down her cheeks and over her chin, as she curled her hands into fists and her biceps strained against the sleeves of her shirt.

“Kara, oh, Little One, I’m sorry,” I said, reaching out for her.

“N-no,” Kara held up a hand as her lips curled, as she tried to regain some composure. “Let h-her… let her finish. I w-want to underst-t-tand,” she cried, her breaths coming harder, her tearful reaction more physical.

It broke me, and I know it decimated Alex, to see Kara react so violently. Alex’s teary interlude was less physical, less apparent, but I know it hurt her, all the same, to witness Kara’s reaction to her secret.

“Thanksgiving, I… it’s why I was a wreck,” Alex finally found her voice again. “I found out the woman I was in love with was… was General Astra In-Ze, Arclominian of the First Order and Public Enemy Number One to you, your mother, and your planet. I thought… I thought she was trying to get to you through me.”

Kara’s gaze flit between us both, her tears falling hot and full onto her shirt, blooming like dew on the white, freshly starched fabric.

“Alex I—I don’t understand why… why y-you would k-k-keep her from me,” Kara sobbed, sniffling into her arm. I left Alex then, moving to hold Kara, to comfort her, because Alex and I had already come to that agreement. If things went poorly with whatever we revealed, protect Kara first, foremost, and always.

“Shh, darling girl,” I told Kara, placing a kiss onto her forehead. “Your sister… though I was deeply hurt, I understand it now. I was Kryptonian, a criminal mastermind, supposedly. Of course she… she hid her knowledge of me to protect you.”

“Did y-you know?” Kara wiped once more at her face, mascara running in little streaks along the corners of her eyelids. “Or did Alex just… just keep you in the dark, too?”

I looked over toward Alex, who had wrapped her arms around her torso, physically holding herself together. I wanted to go to her as well, wanted to take her in my arms and tell her it would be okay, that it would take time, that we must work to become the family I knew we could be.

“She told me about you the day she said we should no longer see each other,” I mumbled, remembering the sinking feeling of despair, of anger, of humiliation, remembering what Alex had cornered me into while I was unawares. Beyond the shooting, beyond the kryptonite, that manipulation, above all, was always her worst betrayal. She knew it, and she’d been striving to make amends ever since.

But how did we communicate that to Kara? How might we make sense of the complex circuitry that our electric, powerful relationship once was?

“You didn’t come looking for me?”

“Oh, Little One, I wanted to,” I said, burying my nose in her hair. “I looked for you everyday. I wanted to see you so badly.”

“But Alex…” Kara’s face was hot and mottled, the drink having taken worse affect than I supposed. “Alex kept you _away_ from me.”

“She thought she was protecting you,” I whispered.

“That doesn’t matter!” Kara yelled, struggling to release herself from my grip. “She—she—she never gave either of us a choice!” Kara shouted, her sniffles continuing, but her voice, stronger, angrier, than before. “What gave you the _right_ , Alex?!” Kara fumed, looming over her sister, her anger coming off of her in waves.

“Ever since you came here, it’s been my job to take care of you,” Alex said softly.

“She’s family!”

“She wasn’t my family,” Alex countered. “She was… Kara, this was hard for me, too. I thought she… I thought she never wanted me. I thought it was all some… some elaborate trick! After everything you told me about her, her missions, her covert operations… it was just too convenient to be true!”

“You thought she—what? Seduced you to get to me?” Kara spat at her sister.

“How was I supposed to know?!” Alex shouted back. “I’d never—you asked if I was gay, right? Well, in all seriousness, yeah. Probably. But I had a lot on my plate growing up, with dad gone and mom’s work and… and _you_.” Alex was holding back her tears now, the weight of her history with Kara finally brought to light, finally laid bare between them both.

“It took her coming into my life to even make me think that because I’d always, always been wrapped up in other things to even think why it never felt right with men. She was kind, and smart, and beautiful, and she wanted me. Just me,” Alex continued, and I felt the sincerity in every word she spoke. Her lack of self-awareness was fed by a lack of self-care, and it hurt me to see that realization sweeping between the two now that it had been vocalized.

“Kara, you could have your pick of any person on the planet, because you’re you, but I have never, ever felt special. And she… she made feel that, made me feel unique. And wanted. Made me feel like I was enough,” Alex sniffled a little, trying to catch her breath. “And to think it was all a lie? To think she tricked me? After I fell—after I…”

Alex paused here, to take a deep, heaving breath, and to lock eyes with me. To show me she still felt that way, small and unworthy and completely astonished that I would choose her, again and again and so many times over. Because she is brave. Because she is intelligent, and loyal, and fierce, and strong; her soul, her very essence, is the most beautiful thing I have encountered on this planet. I couldn’t tell her there and then, standing in Kara’s kitchen, but I told her every day afterwards, and I tell her everyday, still. _I love you, Brave One_ , I say. And on that night, in Kara’s kitchen, telling the truth of her betrayal… that is perhaps when she was bravest of all.

Not when she was facing an adversary.

But when she was facing her sister.

“I’m not proud of what I did but I had to guard my heart in some way,” Alex managed, after all of it. “I had to… to protect us both.”

“Alex, I… Alex, of course you’re worth—you’re…” Kara paused and groaned, wiping her fingers over her cheeks. “This is a lot,” she said, turning to lean over the counter. I went back to Alex at that point, feeling much like one of those highlighter-colored tennis balls, volleyed back and forth across a net until the players on both sides grew too tired to handle me any more.

“It’s okay,” I whispered to Alex, gathering her up in my arms. “This is right, we’re doing the right thing.”

“She hates me,” Alex mumbled into my shoulder, clutching at my back. “Astra, I can’t—I can’t hurt her like this—”

“We’re together, now. At the end of the day, all of us are together. And you did that, Alex. It took you time, it took us _both_ time, but we’re here now. Kara,” I called to her, looked pleadingly up at her distant form, perched helplessly on the kitchen counter. “Kara, please.”

“Why should I trust anything she says any more?” Kara whispered. “If she kept you from me—”

“Kara, I know this will be hard for you to understand, but I agree with Alex’s actions, in this case.”

“How can you say that?” Kara asked, the words biting harder than sand streams and debris in the deserts. “Didn’t you… didn’t you want to see me?”

“Of course, Kara, of course I did. But… there had recently been a shooting at my shop, when all of this came to a head. I… did some things that Alex knows about, things that, very logically, would’ve seemed dangerous to Alex at the time. We’ll never get those months of knowing back, but I won’t fault Alex’s caution. No matter what happened six months ago, Alex brought us together, today, and I want to celebrate that.”

“What changed her mind?” Kara asked, floating down off the counter, slowly drawing nearer to where I held Alex, whose shoulders were shaking but who didn’t make a sound. Even in her grief, she didn’t want to bother anyone else.

“Was it you?” Kara asked. “You said she called it off but you’re obviously… together. What did you say to her?”

“Only Alex can answer that,” I said, loosening my grip on the woman in my arms, bringing my fingers up to catch her tears. She smiled up at me and shut her eyes, an expression of resignation settling over her features as securely as safety goggles. She wore it with practiced ease, with the familiarity of someone who oftentimes had to explain, in granular detail, the reasoning behind grave decisions she made.

“I couldn’t… I couldn’t get over her,” Alex answered. “Even after all of the… the danger I thought she might bring, Astra was still—she was still the woman I fell in love with. The first person ever, that I’ve…” Alex looked back at me and her tears had stopped flowing, but her voice was still shaking. I took her hand again, realizing I could provide little in the way of comfort. Kara straightened up and refused to look at our interlocked fingers; but if we were to be together, it was something she would have to grow accustomed to.

“I was afraid of what she might bring to your life, Kara, but eventually, I saw that all she ever wanted to give you was love. Love and Kryptonian protection, so I could hardly say no to that,” Alex clarified, quirking a somber half-smile. “And me? I guess I wised up. I… figured out it was just—I don’t know, kismet, or something. I missed her. So I tried to patch things up, tried to… to get you to her without interfering with the first meeting, because I wasn’t ready to go into all of this.”

Alex stepped closer to Kara and looked pleadingly at her sister, desperate for some concession, for some small indication that her anger had been alleviated by Alex’s story.

“We… we never stopped loving each other. But once I knew I had to bring you two back together… Astra and I were just finally able to be together, freely, with the knowledge of you between us.”

“You say it like I’m a hurdle,” Kara murmured, her body language still rigidly closed off. “Like I’m something you have to get over.”

“Kara, we… as much _recent_ history, as there is between Alex and I… if we are to rebuild _our_ relationship, as aunt, niece, and fellow Kryptonians, Alex and I would need your approval,” I expounded further. “As I’ve indicated, my feelings for your sister are independent of my feelings for you. I wish to mend the bond we once shared, but if my being with Alex will prohibit that—”

“Then I’ll step aside,” Alex said, nodding to affirm her promise. “I won’t ask you for your blessing, Kara. This is all too weird and too quick for that. But I can… take a step back, while you and Astra work on your own stuff.”

“But you don’t want to,” Kara argued. “You don’t want to call it off with her.”

“But I will, Kara, if that’s what makes you—”

“I don’t care what you would be willing to do, Alex. You’d be willing to throw yourself off a cliff if it meant keeping my secret,” Kara grumbled. “And hers, too, I’m guessing. So what is the truth, huh? What do you want?”

“I… Kara, this isn’t about me—”

“No, Alex, of course it's about you,” Kara insisted. “It’s been about me for eleven years, and I never thought about how it all might affect you… well, I’m thinking about it now. Alex,” Kara gripped her sister by the shoulders and tried to catch her eyes, those deep brown irises glued to the floor in shame. She tiled her sister’s chin up and asked outright: “What do you want, Alex?”

Alex shook her head, but Kara persisted. “It’s okay,” she whispered.

“I want…I… I want h-her,” Alex admitted, floundering a little, unable to meet anyone’s eyes in the room.

“And?”

“And I want you to be okay with it!” Alex said, finally getting out the part that was weighing on her the most. “I don’t want you to think this was anything other than… than chance, Kara. We’re so alike, and she… she…”

“I want the same things she does,” I affirmed. “It would be the greatest honor of my life on this planet, to spend my days with Alexandra. It would be an honor still, to know that the woman that my heart chose has been protecting my dearest niece for even longer than I once did.”

“I’m your _only_ niece,” Kara retorted, shrugging one shoulder. “Just like I’m your only sister,” she continued, turning back to Alex. “And I think this will take a lot of getting used to, but… I don’t ever want you to feel like you can’t come to me with your struggles, Alex.” Kara finally, blessedly, wrapped her arms around her sister and the tension in Alex’s shoulders melted away. “I wish you every happiness.”

“Thank you,” Alex whispered, holding onto Kara for dear life. "Thank you, Kara, so much, thank you--"

“Aunt Astra?” Kara looked over the crown of Alex’s head at me. “Bring it in.”

I took one step and held onto the pair of them, who I loved for different reasons, in a myriad of different ways. And though the tears were hot and the words damaging, and hurtful, and shocking, they were true, at the very least. There was honesty and vulnerability and many other emotions I’ve come to learn that Alex despises in my many years with her. But it was all necessary, and immensely cathartic for myself and for Alex. I only hoped adding my return, her new job, and her sister’s coming out onto one heaping plate would not be too much for Kara to handle.

“Even though it is yet early, perhaps it is best if we call it a night,” I said. “And between the three of us, we’ve certainly had some rather strong wine this evening.”

“That’s not… that’s not even a factor here,” Kara insisted, releasing Alex from her grip.

I tilted my head, noting the little wince Kara produced as she looked above me at the light overhead.

“Does your head hurt, Little One?”

“…maybe,” Kara confessed.

“Then perhaps you should finish your dinner, and take one night’s rest,” I suggested. “We can revisit this topic with clearer heads in the morning.”

“I second that,” Alex said, squeezing her sister’s shoulder comfortingly. “Sleep on it. Yell at me some more, if you need to. But… Kara, if Astra is going to be a part of your life, or—a part of _our_ lives—I just thought it would be better for you to know the whole story on the front end.”

I disliked Alex’s wording, because this was not, by any means, the ‘whole story.’ Kara knew nothing of my attack on Leah’s boyfriend, or who the assassin was that killed Cat’s driver. She knew nothing of alien slavery, or Maxwell Lord the tech tycoon, or of the shadow agency, the _DEO,_ with its questionable detention policies in violation of multiple humanitarian and ethical standards. She knew nothing of Roulette, of the substances concocted to destabilize and detain even the strongest of aliens. She knew little of Fort Rozz, and the types of criminals her mother sentenced who would love to see her dead, even after all of these years. Kara knew of me and Alex, together, but she knew nothing of the alien-inhabited underworld that lurked beneath the shimmery veneer of National City’s _normal_ , human population.

“Okay, I… good plan,” Kara managed, looking back to her plate at the dinner table. “I’ll… uhm, I’ll just put these plates in the microwave, then.”

“Perhaps I should go,” I said, moving toward the table along with Kara.

“No, Aunt Astra, don’t,” Kara said, picking up mine and Alex’s cold food. “We can… it will be—”

“I think you need to speak with your sister,” I told her honestly, picking up the other plate that remained on the table. “Openly. And perhaps there are questions you have for her that are easier without my being here.”

“…this was supposed to be our family dinner,” Kara pouted, depositing the food-laden plates onto the counter.

“Well, we have the rest of our lives on this planet to try again, Little One,” I teased her, throwing my arm around her shoulders and pressing a kiss to her temple. “What if I bring you breakfast before work tomorrow? A scone or two or... a half dozen? And how about… a pumpkin spice latte?”

“Will you be awake then?” Kara questioned. “I’m supposed to be in by 8 on the dot, so I’ll probably go early—”

“I will have been awake for several hours,” I told her. “Have you forgotten that I was once a military woman?” I added cheekily. “And now, I own and operate a coffee shop. It will not take me long to bring you breakfast for your first day. We will eat together, and discuss… things.”

“Things, right,” Kara said, nodding at my suggestion. “Do you at least want to take a plate to go?”

“What a marvelous idea to make sure I will return. I could never abandon you entirely, knowing I had not returned your plate,” I grinned, poking her playfully in the side.

“Aunt Astraaaaaa,” Kara chuckled, smiling for the first time in several long, drawn-out minutes.

“Can I, uh, walk you down?” Alex chimed in from living area, where she had wandered to give Kara and I a little more space.

I looked to Kara for her cue, wondering if she would rather have it out with her sister as soon as I exited the premises, or if she could use those few minutes to herself to process, to consider, to hopefully give Alex the thought and patience she deserved.

Kara shrugged, but also nodded her confirmation, mimicking her sister’s earlier behavior and staring at the food in front of her.

“I’ll see you in the morning, Kara,” I told her, gathering her up in my arms and holding her tightly, resisting the urge to kiss her cheek once again.

“ _Good night, Aunt Astra_ ,” Kara replied in Kryptonese. The language warmed me in ways the to-go plate of food never would, but I did not linger, or try to engage in my native tongue any longer with Kara. Alex was waiting for me by the door, waiting to walk me down, or, knowing Alex, to possibly run off into the night to grab another bottle of alcohol.

“I’ll be right back,” Alex told Kara, slipping her hand down to the small of my back.

“Uh, Alex?”

“Yeah, Kara?”

“While you’re down, you want to run down to the bodega and grab some ice cream pints?” Kara asked, fiddling with the dirtied cutlery in her sink. “I think we’re going to need it.”

“One quart of Rocky Road, coming up.”

“Get Moose Tracks, even if it’s only the pint.”

“Gotcha,” Alex said, and I thought I saw the sisters smile at each other, the glimmer of recovery, after an unexpected shock.

I waited until we were nearly two flights down from Kara’s apartment before I wrapped my arm around Alex’s waist.

“That could have gone better,” she mumbled.

“I’m not sure it could have,” I replied. “I am sure it could have gone much, much worse.”

“She _cried_.”

“What did you expect?” I told her. “It was… it was very strange, Alex. What if one of my friends from Earth approached me, and told me, that for almost a year, she had been engaged in a relationship with my sister? My sister who is _dead_.”

“Yeah, okay,” Alex said. “It’s… it’s like Kara said, it’s a lot…”

“I think one night of tears is worth many future evenings of happiness with us all together.”

“I sure hope so,” Alex said, turning into my body to tangle her fingers in the fabric at the small of my back.

“I’m certain of it,” I told her, looping my other arm around her middle. We stood on the sidewalk outside of Kara’s apartment complex, just holding each other for a moment. “I know you need to talk to her, but I wish I did not have to leave you both,” I confessed.

“I don’t want you to go,” Alex whispered.

She pressed her lips against mine as we stood on the sidewalk. Her pressure was firm, insistent, and the way she clutched at my shoulder blades as if I might launch into the clouds at any moment was testament to her desire for my continued presence.

She kissed me once more, very simply, very easily, before pulling away and resting her forehead against my own.

“Can I come and stay with you, once I get Kara to… to not hate me anymore?”

“Kara does not hate you,” I told her, brushing my curled fingers along her cheek. “But you are always welcome in my home, if you are seeking comfort, darling.”

“God, why are you so perfect?” she asked, scratching at the nape of my neck.

“We both know I am nothing of the sort.”

“Perfect for me, then,” Alex amended. “I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing. You see how fucked up my life can be sometimes.”

“You are young, yet,” I said. “If you keep me around long enough, I’ll do everything in my power to un-fuck it.”

“Un-fuck?”

“Is there better terminology you can think of?” I asked, smiling.

“No, I don’t think so,” Alex smiled back. “But that’s one hell of a promise. If we ever get married, be sure to include that in your vows, okay?”

I stiffened in her arms and gasped, wondering if she had only been joking to alleviate the tension from our previous interactions with Kara. And yet, she did not seem insincere. I knew that I loved Alex, that I wanted to be with her, but planting that seed in my head made everything clearer, the future, especially. Kara had asked Alex what she wanted, but what of me?

Alex, dressed in something resplendent, standing before Kara and her family, as well as my friends at the shop, M’gann at my side, Cat somewhere in the crowd, probably officiating, knowing her inclinations for controlling every aspect of a project. I wanted flowers everywhere, greenery climbing columns and white, purple, blue, red, yellow, and orange petals scattered around us, a reminder of a planet alive, of the natural beauty Alex and I could still enjoy together. The bracelets we might exchange, the vows we would trade, the promises fulfilled each and every day, as long as we both lived in the light.

“…w-what?” I managed, after trying to shove those racing thoughts away.

“I… I meant, uh,” Alex pulled away and met my gaze briefly before shyly looking down, her lashes full and covering those gorgeous brown eyes. “I don’t know what I meant.”

“I think you do,” I challenged, peaking down and eventually tilting her chin up, my smile so wide I could hardly press the kiss I was hoping to deliver to her forehead. “But I think there have been enough emotional revelations for one night. Let us simply say good night, for now.”

“For now,” Alex insisted.

“Because you are coming over later.”

“Yes.”

“I might be sleeping.”

“I’ll keep quiet.”

“Here,” I told her, reaching down into my pocket. “It’s the key to the side door. The one with the purple sticker is the one to my apartment.”

“Uhm… thanks,” she said, fighting through her own smile. “Kara’s going to wonder where I am, if I’m not back with ice cream soon.”

She looked giddy as a child with a candy in her hand, clutching that key to her chest. She would tell me later that my nonchalance over something as “huge” as giving her a key to my place of dwelling had almost caused her to go back with me that very second. Especially after hints of a large future commitment, such as marriage. I didn’t recognize the action for what it was, thinking only of how I might get Alex into my apartment as easily as possible. She would stay there for several nights afterwards. Then, due to yet another emergency (that we could rarely ever escape), I ended up staying almost exclusively at her apartment.

We did not tell Kara this.

We did not tell Kara half of what we should’ve told her.

But Kara, exceptional Kara, took on more than either Alex or I could’ve ever imagined. The issue of our relationship was no issue at all, compared to what she would face in the future. Lucky for all of us, she was strong enough to handle it.

She has always had the heart of a hero.

“Go, get your ice cream,” I told Alex, thinking of that blonde young woman above us, probably staring at us through the walls.

“Don’t wait up?” she said, quickly back-pedalling down the side walk.

“Of course not,” I told her, waving her off as she checked over her shoulder in the dark. “I’ll be home when you need me.”

“I love you!” she said, only loud enough for me to hear as she ducked into the door of the convenience store.

I shot into the air, heading home, feeling loved, knowing for the first time in three decades, that I would get to see my family again in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 13,000 words in two scenes of talking; i'm sorry if this was slow but these three had to have it out. just imagine what the 'supergirl' talk is gonna be like in the future :O
> 
> and yeah, i've gotta do one more chapter to wrap up loose ends and jettisoned the plot into season one (or so has been the objective when i started this thing). idk when it's coming, but it is. I swear imma finish this!!!

**Author's Note:**

> Part of a gif set/fic challenge-not-challenge-sort of-request I made to The Only SPL. Sorry-not-sorry this grew a plot and is already upwards of 20k words :D :D :D


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